Missing visual feedback when launching some applications
This bug was originally submitted on to Nautilus on Bugzilla but I'm moving it here as suggested by @csoriano:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=91362
When starting an application in GNOME, either through:
- The Activities overview
- The Applications menu
- A launcher in Nautilus
- A link or button from another application
- A launcher from the desktop
It might take several seconds until the application actually opens. During these few seconds there is no visual feedback whatsoever that the application is starting.
In the case of Tails, users often click again several times on one of our desktop launchers after nothing happens the first time. This leads to several instances of, for example Tor Browser, being launched.
This issue has been reported to Tails by digital security trainers working with journalists unexperienced with Tails or GNOME. But while doing user testing for Tails, I also repeatedly saw people hitting this bug (4 participants out of 5). 3 of them had GNOME on their regular operating system. My conclusion is that this issue does not only affect people who are new to GNOME but long-term users as well.
I'm aware that desktop launchers or starting applications from Nautilus are deprecated methods of starting GNOME applications but this bugs also affects the optional Applications menu and the Activities overview.
Note that not all applications are affected equally. In the screencast in attachment the first application, Onion Share, has no feedback, while the second application, Characters has a spinner to provide feedback: