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Ah yes, the skeleton screen. Because it’s so much better to have the application in an unusable state, but at least it’s on-screen! There’s another state that
by fuzzy2 5y ago
Ah yes, the skeleton screen. Because it’s so much better to have the application in an unusable state, but at least it’s on-screen!
There’s another state that may be related to uBlock Origin (or other extensions) immediately afterwards, too: You can click bookmarks etc. but nothing loads (only after a significant delay). Again, awesome UX.
I guess I’m slowly becoming conservative because I’ve come to hate change. Most of the time, it doesn’t improve anything. And then, with increasing odds, changes actually make things worse. Not just limited to Firefox, of course. Also Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, whatever. Hell, even cars are getting worse every year.
- gherkinnn 5y ago> Ah yes, the skeleton screen. Because it’s so much better to have the application in an unusable state, but at least it’s on-screen! Precisely. Much better. I know something is happening. And if done well, I can interact with the shell, like use the search box, while the content is still loading.
- fuzzy2 5y agoA skeleton screen is not interactive though. You cannot do anything except watching it pulse or whatever. Keep in mind that the content here is the shell itself. I also already know something is happening. That’s what the busy cursor is for.
- gherkinnn 5y agoThat does make it like a splash screen of old. With extra teasing. I understand the annoyance. It seems as if only Firefox on Windows has these skeleton screens and so couldn't try for myself. I assumed that much of the shell like search bar, close button, and the menu would be ready.
- Nextgrid 5y agoI used to love change up until about a decade ago. Back in the day, computing was still pushing the boundaries of what's possible and new features could change your life. Nowadays, the innovation has plateaued and computing became an ad delivery mechanism and a way for employees of bloated corporations to justify their salaries "fixing" things that didn't need to be fixed.
- kevingadd 5y agoSkeleton screens are a great example of bad design being popularized because a couple people in power set arbitrary requirements. "It has to start fast" is a common requirement (a certification requirement on some game consoles, in fact) which leads to skeleton screens, and it juices certain metrics in a way that appeals to metrics-driven leadership, so eventually you get them everywhere and it hides the fact that your application takes forever to actually load and be usable. There are a few different pieces of software I'm stuck using that will often show me a skeleton for multiple seconds while I wait to actually be able to use the app. Just show me a loading screen and a progress bar. Some people in the browser space haven't lost their minds and track things like how often the layout of a page changes during loading, how often it wiggles around, etc - which penalizes skeletons and other bad tricks, as it should. But this particular sensibility hasn't caught on elsewhere.
- jaharios 5y agoSkeleton screen serves another purpose than just fast startup metrics. Not everyone runs good hardware, in fact the majority doesn't. When you click to open something and it doesn't load immediately many people will click again and again which leads to opening 2+ windows and also adding to the loading time of the first one. When 70%+ of the users are not skilled in tech using laptops on battery saving mode this happens a lot.
- robertoandred 5y agoSounds like a Windows problem. On Macs, the bouncing Dock icon tells you that something's happening.
- kevincox 5y agoPersonally I think it is actually pretty great. It opens faster so that I can position the window where I want and it loads fast enough that by the time I've actually tried to do anything it is ready to go.