QuickSplash.NET will instantly (<0.5s) launch a splash screen for your Windows Forms application, giving your users immediate feedback whilst the .NET framework and your Windows application loads in the background.  This dramatically improves the perceived performance of your application.

First impressions count!  Should nothing happen for 10 seconds after launching your fantastic Windows application, your users will conclude that your application is slow and of poor quality.  You need to let them know that something is happening - whilst your application loads in the background.

The .NET startup problem

Before your Windows Forms / Visual Basic / VB.NET / C# .NET can do anything (even show a splashscreen), the .NET framework must be loaded into memory.  On a cold start (i.e, just after a reboot), the .NET framework isn’t loaded into memory by default, nor is it in the disk cache; so approximately 21Mb must first be loaded from disk before your application gets to execute its first instruction.  Depending on hard disk speed, this can take up to 7sec on 2005 hardware, or 20sec on 2001 hardware!

The result is that the time between the user clicking on your application icon, and the first indication that something (anything!) happened can be up to 20 seconds.  Users will often end up clicking on the app icon multiple times, trying to make something happen, and thinking “what a crap app!”  Not the kind of first impression you want, especially if you are trying to entice your users away from a "speedy" legacy application.

The Solution

QuickSplash.NET is a native Win32 component that shows a (customised) splashscreen - in less than 0.5 seconds, whilst loading your Windows Forms / Visual Basic / VB.NET / C# .NET application in the background.  Once the framework and your application has initialised, a simple file deletion tells the splashscreen to shut down.

This dramatically improves the perceived startup performance of your application.  Rather than having to wait for up to 20 seconds wondering if anything is happening, your users watch an interactive splash screen giving them a progress update of what is happening.  20 seconds just seem to fly buy when you're distracted by something.

As you can see in the animation to the left, QuickSplash.NET is a Win32 executable - Start.exe - that you bundle with your .NET application.

Running Start.exe displays a customised splashscreen graphic, overlaying status updates and a progress bar, whilst loading your .NET application in the background.

Once your .NET application has fully loaded and initialised, a simple file deletion causes the Splashscreen to close.

Instant startup

QuickSplash.NET has a splashscreen displayed for your user instantly (<0.5 sec).  This gives the impression of your application being highly responsive, and allows you to load the .NET framework and do any other initialisation and loading whilst they are distracted.  Splashscreen solutions that use the .NET framework to load the splash image must first load the framework into memory - this can lead to a delay of up to 20 seconds before any user feedback is given.

Fully customisable

A configuration file controls all aspects of QuickSplash.NET, from which splashscreen image to load, to where the status label & progress bar (if required) should be loaded, to which .NET executable to load.

Dynamically update the status label from your application

The text displayed on the splashscreen status label can be dynamically updated by your .NET application whilst it is loading, simply by overwriting the contents of the data.lock file.

.NET 1.1 & .NET 2.0 compatible

QuickSplash.NET is compatible with both .NET 1.1 & .NET 2.0 Windows Forms applications, in both VB.NET and C#.  Full samples and documentation for QuickSplash in both of these environments are provided.

Help and support

QuickSplash ships with a full help manual, and sample applications showing how it can be used. Further support on is provided via the user forums on this site.