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That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed.
by JoshMnem 9y ago
That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed.
It's also one of the irritating things about "Material Design" websites, where responses to clicks are artificially delayed before speeding out with unnatural acceleration. "Nothing is happening. JUST KIDDING!" I'm not sure if that is to mask the slowness of mobile devices or if it's the cause of them. It's the animation spam[1] of the current generation of UIs.
* [1] "Let's make our website sparkle. It will be 'delightful'." http://dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/snow.htm http://dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex3/snow.htm
- ubernostrum 9y agoThat is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. Web browsers have progress bars. I think your complaint is with "sites" that just serve a JS payload and then load "the real site" entirely from requests made by JS. Turns out if you generate and serve actual HTML, you get a progress bar for free!
- vanillaboy 9y agoJS lets you easily implement bars that do reflect progress. Turn on the animation => start an async action (e.g. a database call) => end the animation. An error occured? Show the error. Here, simple and informative to the user - and much better than raw html.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't know why every thread about Web applications needs someone to tell me that technically HTML was just designed to be a document format. OK, great, now it isn't just that.
- pletnes 9y agoThat’s true, but I can mention several online stores that do this. Even on a good network the site remains blank for seconds at times. If they at least served me a logo I’d know the site wasn’t dead!
- Bromskloss 9y ago> I can mention several online stores that do this I would like to hear which ones they are, that I may try them.
- tinus_hn 9y agoFirst someone states that the way web sites work now sucks. Then the next person states, ‘Well we used to build sites this way and then it doesn’t suck’. And then the next person comes in saying ‘well that just isn’t the way we build sites now’. If that isn’t the way we build sites now, either change the way we build sites or accept that it sucks. But this is Hacker News so we’re supposed to think about different ways to build sites than what we do now.
- scoot 9y agoThis a (mostly) solved problem. With Server Side Rendering the html payload delivers what the client side is would have rendered. The client side js takes over rendering after it loads.
- emodendroket 9y agoIt's just... what's the point of talking to anyone who will listen about how HTML was designed for hypertext? Yes, we all know that. Today the world's most-popular Web sites include YouTube and Facebook. We aren't going back.
- fpig 9y agoHe did not say that. Generating the HTML for the initial page load server-side does not make HTML "just a document format". It improves loading and search-friendliness of your web site.
- chatmasta 9y agoI solved this in a react app I’m working on by overriding XMLHttpRequest.prototype.open to listen for the request lifecycle events and update a global “percent loaded” used to render a progress bar at the top of the page. It’s far from perfect but is at least a good enough heuristic for the user to know when the page is loading a request.
- JoshMnem 9y agoTry to load an AMP page with JavaScript turned off. It can take many seconds, and there is no loading indicator.
- emodendroket 9y ago> That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. To be fair, depending on how the progress bar is implemented, it might not be a guarantee.
- nitely 9y agoClicks have a 200ms (IIRC) delay on Android to give a chance to recognize other gestures. There are hacks to get ride of it, though. It may have to do with that.
- JoshMnem 9y agoIt's on desktop websites too, like YouTube (add to watchlist), and the delays are longer than 200 ms.