Many people use a modified version of the program's About
dialogue window as a splash screen, but you can also create a
dedicated splash screen window that contains an image of the
company logo along with some program information. The choice is
yours but ultimately a splash screen is nothing more than a window
that is shown while a program loads in the background. When the
program has loaded, the splash screen is closed automatically.
The simplest method of displaying your splash screen is to use a
program loader function. Typically this will be your program's main
function or a function called from your main function. The program
loader first loads and displays the splash screen, then loads the
rest of your program in the background before closing the splash
screen window and finally showing the main window.
Some splash screens display progress information during the load
sequence, thus your program loader should send messages to the
splash screen and give time to the system to allow messages to be
processed. This will increase the time it takes to load your
program, but if the load process is lengthy to begin with, it is
better to give some indication of the progress.
