What do you want to see while you wait?

On bugzilla.mozilla.org, when you run a search, if your browser supports “server push,” Bugzilla will show you an interim page while the search runs.  Currently it shows an animated dino head (left) chomping on bugs, and the text “Please wait while your bugs are munched retrieved.”  It’s cute and all, but it’s kind of getting old.  And being that the page is entirely a cosmetic thing designed to entertain you while you wait, we should change it out once in a while anyway.  We’re planning to upgrade Bugzilla tomorrow night, and it’s the perfect opportunity to spice it up a little.

Gerv’s got a few ideas over on bug 438362… a neat javascript backed game where you click on the ants or somesuch.  If you like it or think you’d hate it, comment here (go try the mockups on the bug first).

If you have other ideas, or can implement one of the existing ones, feel free to post them on the bug.  I have a couple ideas, but no artistic skills to implement them…

  • A Mozilla dino standing there waiting for bugs – Buggie walks over to him carrying a basket of critters and hands it to him.
  • Buggie standing there with his hand shielding his eyes from the sun, turning his head back and forth like he’s looking for something…

Maybe if we have several of these things, it could randomly pick one each time.

Buggie poses for you, courtesy of Dave Shea.

9 Replies to “What do you want to see while you wait?”

  1. The bugs that go past the bottom of the page cause the scrollbar to flicker on then off which makes the text and animation shunt left and right a bit, so you might need to adjust the game so they don’t get all the way to the bottom.

  2. How about Buggie being sucked into the ghost-capture device from Ghostbusters (y’know, continuing the theme…).

  3. Why not leave as is and add an unobtrusive script to load the ants game for those folks who browse with scripting enabled? Or unobtrusively web2.0ify it and add >1MB of javascript framework and multiple AJAX calls for no functional reason whatsoever?

    On a related note, I’d like to see one of the png optimizers modified to work with individual aPNG frames.

  4. I don’t want to pollute the bug report with lots of joke ideas, but …
    dino playing whack-a-mole with bugs?

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