[graue]

Off-topic rant: "Someone with spare time on their hands feel like adding a 'Disable splash screen' checkbox to the preferences panel?" That suggestion illustrates a common anti-pattern in open source software. Broken behavior should simply be fixed, not receive an extra option to turn it off. No one wants to have to check an "unbreak my software" checkbox.

[w1ntermute]

I don't think this is necessarily broken behavior. Photoshop has a splash screen too, and from what I understand, it's there because of the long loading time.

[wtallis]

A splash screen that can't be minimized, hidden, or covered up with a useful window is definitely broken behavior. I think it can only be implemented by abusing APIs meant for screensavers and full-screen games.

[sliverstorm]

Are you kidding? All you need is always-on-top behavior, which is usually offered in some form by most window managers.

[wtallis]

I was referring to implementing this behavior on OS X specifically. To get this behavior, you have to deliberately avoid the usual way of throwing up a modal window in order to have that modal window stay visible and on top when the application is deactivated. I don't even have to dig up the source code to know that it reads like an ugly hack that messes with the raw values of an enumerated constant. Most likely, it's in the Quartz backend for GTK, and somebody only implemented half the abstraction for window management.