[IxDA Discuss] Browser throbbers are broken

[jonathan d p ferguson]

hi.

gabe:

I agree. But it's not a limitation of a browser. Browsers just render.

If you want *state* the whole Web is broken. HTTP is stateless.
No browser will be able to know state without a stateful protocol.  
Sorry.
That's why I love to hate the Web we all can't live without. Turning  
state
into a hack leads to broken UI designs--- and bad interactions:
"Don't click again" messages, "Wait for the server" messages, etc...  
the list
is quite endless.

As people on the list have stated before, the Web turned back the clock
on UI design by about 10 years or so...

Keeping state is slightly more complicated, and usually more bandwidth
intensive. Because of that, and because the genius of the Web is the
super-simple HTTP/HTML, it does not, and probably will not, include
state. If you want state, petition the W3C, or make a new *stateful* web
protocol standard.

In my narrow opinion, all attempts (even the much flaunted Web 2.0) to
create state with seriously I/O bound web-based applications
are hacks--- until the Web has state at the protocol level--- not  
application
level.

Anyway. My $0.02.

have a nice day.yad
jdpf


On Aug 17, 2006, at 5:46 PM, Gabriel White wrote:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted  
> material.]
>
> Browser throbbers are broken. These spinning, swirling, pulsing
> artifacts were a great way of indicating state back when a web page
> wasn't loaded until it was loaded, and once it was loaded it didn't
> need to load any more.
>
> But the Web 2.0 blah blah has crept up on us, and I suddenly find
> myself waiting for pages to load with no indication of state. I
> interact with pages, wait for a response, but find myself without any
> idea of whether the connection is actually working, or how long it
> might take to finish the transaction. Okay, so www.gmail.com has it's
> "Loading..." jigger and www.newshutch.com has it's own contextual
> throbber. But these are local pieces of code that are invoked when
> users click on something: they still appear even if there's no
> connection with the server and nothings is actually happening. And
> they provide no indication of progress.
>
> What's needed? Well, I'd like to know the progress of the transation
> (a need already served by browsers, it just doesn't work for AJAX),
> and I'd like to know whether the server connection is alive (something
> browsers don't do now, and pages might work with many different
> servers at the same time, so this isn't exactly trivial).
>
> These are not site-specific needs; this is what's required for the
> next generation browser (Firefox? Flock?). I don't want to have to
> learn each site's design for tracking state and progress - this should
> be something that works at the browser level.
>
> Gabe
>
> www.smallsurfaces.com - Mobile user interface and interaction  
> design resources
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