Splash screen

Netscape Client User Interface Group
Date created: March 11, 1998
Date Last Modified:


Summary Table of Contents Design Goals
  1. The splash screen displays the product name and version
  2. The splash screen can display the vendor's corporate image and branding
  3. The splash screen contains important copyright and third party components information
  4. The splash screen provides automated text information about application loading and network activity

Size and orientation:

The current splash screen image for Netscape Communicator is 390 x 260 pixels in "landscape" orientation.

Sample Splash Screen

Though the best possible visual impact is very important for the design of the splash screen image, it is highly recommended that the image size should be designed as small as possible. The larger the graphic is, the longer it takes for the application to call up the image, thus the slower the image would pop-up during the application start up process.

Image content:
The Netscape Communicator splash screen has the product image (the lighthouse) on the left side of the splash screen graphic, and the company logo at the top far right corner. The product name "Netscape Communicator Standard Edition" and all the components of the product are listed in the center of the splash screen image. There is a light gray beveled frame around the entire image.

Font choice:
The font choice for the product name and other information in the image area matches the company's corporate identity font choice that are used for company's other collateral materials. All the text in this portion is bitmap text which can be polished in an image editing program such as Photoshop with anti-alias graphic treatment.

Background color:
We chose to use white as the background color for the image, and black for the bottom automated text display area for color simplicity and clarilty.

Automated text area:
Below the image area there is a 37 pixels black bar which is divided into two sections. The automated text in the top section is controlled by the code in the start-up process. It provides important information such as components loading and network connection, etc. The copyright text section at the bottom is a static text area. The text is provided through a resource code string so it can be easily localized into any desired languages.

Color palettes and file formats:

For Windows: the image can be created using the Windows 256 color palette and saved as a .bmp file.

For the MacOS: the image can be created using the Mac 256 color palette and saved in .pict format.

For UNIX: the image should use the same color palette as the rest of the icons in the application. The UNIX versions of Netscape Communicator use a customized 23 color palette for the splash screen image. This same color palette is also used for the all the icons in the UNIX versions of Netscape Communicator. The image can be saved in .gif format.