UX Enhancement during startup when connecting to the internet

Nobody has claimed this yet.

As far as I can tell, the way LiveSplit works currently is it downloads certain files (such as the autosplitters list) during the startup. During this time, the UI doesn't even start to render. On the surface it doesn't seem like a big deal, it's a small download that shouldn't take long in a decent connection, but imo this is bad UX. Something similar happens when the splits file is changed as well.

First, even with the good connection it feels like livesplit is slow and unresponsive during the download. Second, there are several reasons why the download could fail or worse, be waiting forever for that 504 response to come. This could be due to some firewall block, server issues from speedrun.com or github, etc.

My proposed solution - LiveSplit should render the UI first and show some kind of loader with appropriate text during the download. There should be a hard timeout and maybe even an error message if it fails. The main issue currently is that there is no communication to the user that LiveSplit is trying to download something from the internet. So when there are any issues like I mentioned above, it's natural to assume the LiveSplit itself is not working. My proposal would solve that issue with the added benefit of making LiveSplit feel more responsive than it currently is.

Start by tracing the startup path and the path triggered when the splits file changes, focusing on where internet downloads block UI rendering. Done means the UI renders before downloads complete, users see loader or status text, and timeout or failure is communicated clearly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.