PhoneGap Android SplashScreen Just Got Better

One PhoneGap 1.7.0 is released in the next day or so doing a splash screen on PhoneGap Android is going to get a lot better. First off the long standing issue of using 9-patch images has been fixed. Really and truly it has this time. I've tested the fix on three different screen sizes.

Secondly, when you setup a splash screen you do the following:

super.setIntegerProperty("splashscreen", R.drawable.splash);
super.loadUrl("file:///android_asset/www/index.html", 10000);

This would show your splash screen 10 seconds then your index.html page would be loaded. Notice I said then. Yup, that's right showing the splash screen is a blocking call. While the splash screen is being displayed your .html/.js/.css is not being loaded in the background. Well, that is all changing so that your splash screen is shown on one thread while your application loads underneath the splash screen in another thread. The best thing is you don't need to make any changes to your code. Just keep calling the splash screen like you normally would.

But wait, I'm anticipating your next question "What if I want the splash screen to go away once my application is loaded before the timeout value is reached?" Okay, I've got good news it's coming. The official way to do this on iOS and Android once the 1.8.0 release is out will be to call:

navigator.splashscreen.hide();

but that call isn't ready yet. However, if you want to be on the bleeding edge you should be able to call:

cordova.exec(null, null, "SplashScreen", "hide", []);

but you are wait out on the edge there so don't blame me if it doesn't work. Then you'll be able to tell the splash screen to go away once you have "deviceready".

document.addEventListener("deviceready", onDeviceReady, false);

function onDeviceReady() {
    console.log("We got device ready");
    cordova.exec(null, null, "SplashScreen", "hide", []);
    // Soon to be
    // navigator.splashscreen.hide();
}

That's all for now.