4 ms·

Dont use a spinner if it loads fast. One thing I have done is adding a little white box with the word "loading..." In it. Users don't have to wait for any anima

Dont use a spinner if it loads fast. One thing I have done is adding a little white box with the word "loading..." In it. Users don't have to wait for any animation to see what it means and it still looks fine for longer loading times.

ricardobeat 7y ago
Showing a static message is not recommended since you can't tell if the application has frozen/crashed. Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/
- qw 7y ago
  You could have a combination of static text and animation. For example "Loading..." where the dots are animated
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Spinners are no better than static messages. They're animated GIFs completely detached from the state of the underlying application, so they'll happily keep spinning forever, even though the application itself has locked up or crashed. It's particularly painful on websites, since unlike desktop apps, a bug or failure in one AJAX handler tends to not break everything else - so the site may sort of work, except some actions never finish.
  - thasaleni 7y ago
    that is the wrong implementation of a spinner
    - bhaak 7y ago
      Maybe but it's the common implementation of a spinner. I can't remember the last time I saw a spinner that actually showed some kind of variable behavior. If you have that, it's more likely you are being shown a progress bar.
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      Basically all spinners on the web work by sending a request which causes the spinner to show up, waiting for a response which causes the spinner to be removed. Many of them don't handle errors which causes them to keep spinning. A static loading message is exactly the same, while the message is on the screen the request is still pending and while it is gone it is not. The only case you are not catching is where the browser locks up and becomes unable to render the spinning which is not that common or useful.

ricardobeat 7y ago

Showing a static message is not recommended since you can't tell if the application has frozen/crashed. Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/

qw 7y ago
You could have a combination of static text and animation. For example "Loading..." where the dots are animated
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Spinners are no better than static messages. They're animated GIFs completely detached from the state of the underlying application, so they'll happily keep spinning forever, even though the application itself has locked up or crashed. It's particularly painful on websites, since unlike desktop apps, a bug or failure in one AJAX handler tends to not break everything else - so the site may sort of work, except some actions never finish.
- thasaleni 7y ago
  that is the wrong implementation of a spinner
  - bhaak 7y ago
    Maybe but it's the common implementation of a spinner. I can't remember the last time I saw a spinner that actually showed some kind of variable behavior. If you have that, it's more likely you are being shown a progress bar.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    Basically all spinners on the web work by sending a request which causes the spinner to show up, waiting for a response which causes the spinner to be removed. Many of them don't handle errors which causes them to keep spinning. A static loading message is exactly the same, while the message is on the screen the request is still pending and while it is gone it is not. The only case you are not catching is where the browser locks up and becomes unable to render the spinning which is not that common or useful.