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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T23:56:00+00:00

Introduction I have been so annoyed by applications that have a startup dialog which

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Introduction

I have been so annoyed by applications that have a startup dialog which is Always on Top configured.

By start dialog I mean the annoying box that tells you what program you just opened (and probably opened on purpose so useless information), who the program is registered to (most likely you, more uselessness), and some other random application specific information. Some have loading bars that indicate startup progress, but otherwise they seem basically useless except to show that your program is actually starting (to prevent the user from opening 5 instances during the loading process because they think it’s not open yet).

The worst though is when this useless information is displayed over all the useful browsers and documents that I may be working on at the time, making me wait until the application is loaded before I can effectively work on something else again.
Most apps have the sense not to do this, but some still continue the practice.

Now that I’m done ranting…

My Question(s)

My question is..Why?

What is the point of all this?
Why does/did anyone ever do this?
What was the reasoning behind it?
Is anyone else annoyed by this?
Is there any benefit to the end user or developer to use this technique?
Should I ever use a startup dialog like this and when?
Anyone else have other comments/rants/suggestions to share with the community?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I share in your annoyance of Always-on-Top dialogs.

    The use of the dialog is to let the user know that the application is actually doing something and hasn’t hung. Back in the day, when IO wasn’t as fast, it was reasonable to assume that the system is not very responsive while the application is doing its IO, so it was reasonable to bar the user from doing anything else while the application was loading.

    Now that IO is faster and more concurrent, there isn’t a need for hogging the user’s focus and the start-up dialogs should simply be regular dialogs.

    Since the main use of the dialog is to indicate application process, I like a visual indication, such as a progress bar. Eclipse does this well IMO.

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