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Remove gap between Tor Launcher window and main browser window

Right now, the Tor Launcher runs, and takes seconds or minutes to complete. The Tor Launcher window, though it says "Tor Browser" on the first screen is not recognizably a web browser, which may be confusing or scary to first-time users.

Then the Tor Launcher window disappears, and then, before a browser window appears, there is a gap of varying length where no window is visible at all. On slow computers, this gap can be as much as tens of seconds and during that time there is no easy way to tell that Tor Browser is still running.

Often users, mistakenly guessing that Tor Browser has crashed, will double-click the Tor Browser app icon a second time and get messages like "Tor Browser is already running, but is not responding" or "Tor unexpectedly exited".

How can we solve this problem? I can think of a few possible solutions:

  1. Don't hide the Tor Launcher window until the main browser window is visible. (Build the browser window hidden during the launch process so that it can appear fast as soon as the launch process is done.)
  2. Show the main browser window below the Tor Launcher window while it launching process is running. Keep the Tor Launcher window modal (always on top) until it is finished.
  3. Embed the Tor Launcher UI in the main browser window. Allow the user to enter a URL in the URL bar even before Tor is fully launched.

I favor (3) as having the best UX. But it is also the most difficult to implement.