For programs that require large load times, it's a common practice to display a Splashscreen that occupies the user's attention. This Toplevel mega widget provides all the display, destroy and timing events. All you do it create the Splashscreen mega widget, populate it as you see fit, then invoke Splash() to display it and Destroy() to tear it down. WWW: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Tk-Splashscreen/