Tip: Look good at startup

Friday, January 18, 2008 at 2:23 PM

Posted by Yannick Stucki, Gadget Developer

Too many gadgets look bad for a few seconds after they start. This problem is especially noticeable when the sidebar (and the gadgets within it) first loads. An all-too-common example: the label that initially displays "label1". Another is the badly positioned image.

Your gadget makes a better impression if it looks good when it starts up. Even if your gadget fetches content dynamically, make sure all visible elements have reasonable default content and positions until the real content is available.

I asked Benjamin if we could use his Volume Control gadget as an example. After only a few minutes, he released a new version that looks much better.

Here's what it used to look like at startup:


And here's what it looks like now:


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