Timeline for How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 26, 2017 at 15:32 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE | I've many times pondered the delightful evils of a kernel patch to cap retransmit backoff to 100ms... | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 16:36 | comment | added | user67695 | Many times when a page takes more than a couple seconds to load, I click the Stop X then the Refresh and it usually reloads instantly. That is why users resubmit. Because, it works! TCP/IP has an exponential backoff which is part of the reason that this can happen. I know that, so I even have a technical and correct justification for reloading a stuck page load. For anything except a payment button, I figure that there is no harm in resubmitting, for the same reasons. Even payment systems will screen out duplicate payments. No harm, all benefit. Like the Close Door button in the elevator! | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 16:23 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE | And +1, this is the best answer. If a task is going to take a nontrivial (more than ordinary page load) amount of time, you need to present it to the user as a background task where they'll receive notification when it finishes, not as a progress indicator of any sort. Even if the latter weren't atrociously annoying to desktop users, it's a huge problem for mobile users who don't know whether letting the screen turn off or switching away from the browser might interrupt/cancel the operation. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 16:20 | comment | added | R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE |
@Gusdor: Because historically it actually worked a lot of the time. You had awful IIS-based servers where requests would go to NUL: with no indication to the client, and resubmitting a few times would get it to go through. That kind of thing still happens on some poorly implemented sites.
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| Mar 24, 2017 at 13:34 | comment | added | AnoE | @Gusdor, gotcha. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 13:28 | comment | added | Darren H | @Gusdor that's a very valid response to the question part of my answer | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 13:18 | comment | added | Gusdor | @AnoE my comment was to address this note: "why users think submitting again or refreshing will somehow help will always be beyond me!" | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 12:37 | comment | added | Gusdor | Users resubmit on interfaces that do not adaquately communicate progress. Has it started? Has it frozen? Did I remember to press the button? Did it register my click? | |
| Mar 22, 2017 at 20:46 | review | First posts | |||
| Mar 22, 2017 at 23:58 | |||||
| Mar 22, 2017 at 20:41 | history | answered | Darren H | CC BY-SA 3.0 |