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The "draft saved" complaint sounds very weird to me, especially as I once had to implement a similar feature in an editor. When editing, one needs to convey to

The "draft saved" complaint sounds very weird to me, especially as I once had to implement a similar feature in an editor. When editing, one needs to convey to users when it's safe to close the app without a risk of data loss. You might want to tell users that connectivity is down and stuff can't sync right now, but "draft saved" also confers some psychological safety that everything is OK. That I don't need to wonder about the state of my editing. I can safely leave and return. There are ways to make that flash more or less. There are even basic ways regular editors do this by visually including a star at the end of a filename. But it will still need to display somehow if it's an environment where you're not hitting ctrl+s manually. Not having some indication is worse than it flashing. If someone asked me that flashing question, I would also say they are annoying and would probably stop using the site, HOWEVER, I would not have considered this, or other similar status indicators related to my work, that toggle automatically to be part of the problem.

makeitdouble 3y ago
Arguably you could hide the info under a button or an actionable item. If the main use case is informing whether the page/app can be closed, letting the user check before closing would do the trick (and potentially force save at that timing if sync was pending).
- deelly 3y ago
  For example, you can show this info when user move cursor to close button.
jbay808 3y ago
As a Substack writer, I find it very distracting. Part of the reason is that when my eyes are looking at the body text, the motion happens in my upper peripheral vision. That's also where tab heading notifications are (eg. an incoming Google Hangouts message). So as I write I keep subconsciously looking up to see what's happened, only to find it's just another "draft saved".
ben0x539 3y ago
> Not having some indication is worse than it flashing. I figure it's more that there's no one-size-fits-all thing. "Normally", that isn't a problem, because you just switch to another program that suits your preferences/takes good care of your brainworms. It just becomes frustrating when companies tie their services to uncustomizable programs (like for instance a website) narrowly designed for their archetypical user persona. ... but beyond that there has to be a better way to do this?? Surely this particular thing has been designed to death a million times. I think with Google Docs, I get to assume everything is saved all the time, so this is the default state that doesn't need to take up space on the screen. In the risky situation where I alt-f4 before the save call returned success or whatever, I get the javascript popup telling me stuff wasn't saved and I can cancel and wait a few seconds. In the other risky situation where the save call just keeps failing for a prolonged amount of time (because my wifi died, usually), I think it says that somewhere in the UI, and it seems like a good enough justification to grab attention to me.
- laserbeam 3y ago
  In most cases, it's better to bring attention to when something is not normal and/or have a faded indicator. That indicator matters because different programs have different conventions about how stuff gets saved, and you want users to not second guess your conventions.
iSnow 3y ago
It's perfectly OK to add a star char the moment the user starts typing and removing it once they save. For many who are easily distracted, it's horrible if something like "saving draft...." appears and disappears every couple of seconds. If the network is down or syncing fails for other reasons, display a warning, preferably in red so the user notices. But don't spam if everything is going fine.
JohnFen 3y ago
> When editing, one needs to convey to users when it's safe to close the app without a risk of data loss. Wouldn't it be better to put up a warning dialog if the user tries to close the app when there's still state to be saved?

makeitdouble 3y ago

Arguably you could hide the info under a button or an actionable item. If the main use case is informing whether the page/app can be closed, letting the user check before closing would do the trick (and potentially force save at that timing if sync was pending).

deelly 3y ago
For example, you can show this info when user move cursor to close button.

jbay808 3y ago

As a Substack writer, I find it very distracting. Part of the reason is that when my eyes are looking at the body text, the motion happens in my upper peripheral vision. That's also where tab heading notifications are (eg. an incoming Google Hangouts message). So as I write I keep subconsciously looking up to see what's happened, only to find it's just another "draft saved".

ben0x539 3y ago

> Not having some indication is worse than it flashing. I figure it's more that there's no one-size-fits-all thing. "Normally", that isn't a problem, because you just switch to another program that suits your preferences/takes good care of your brainworms. It just becomes frustrating when companies tie their services to uncustomizable programs (like for instance a website) narrowly designed for their archetypical user persona. ... but beyond that there has to be a better way to do this?? Surely this particular thing has been designed to death a million times. I think with Google Docs, I get to assume everything is saved all the time, so this is the default state that doesn't need to take up space on the screen. In the risky situation where I alt-f4 before the save call returned success or whatever, I get the javascript popup telling me stuff wasn't saved and I can cancel and wait a few seconds. In the other risky situation where the save call just keeps failing for a prolonged amount of time (because my wifi died, usually), I think it says that somewhere in the UI, and it seems like a good enough justification to grab attention to me.

laserbeam 3y ago
In most cases, it's better to bring attention to when something is not normal and/or have a faded indicator. That indicator matters because different programs have different conventions about how stuff gets saved, and you want users to not second guess your conventions.

iSnow 3y ago

It's perfectly OK to add a star char the moment the user starts typing and removing it once they save. For many who are easily distracted, it's horrible if something like "saving draft...." appears and disappears every couple of seconds. If the network is down or syncing fails for other reasons, display a warning, preferably in red so the user notices. But don't spam if everything is going fine.

JohnFen 3y ago

> When editing, one needs to convey to users when it's safe to close the app without a risk of data loss. Wouldn't it be better to put up a warning dialog if the user tries to close the app when there's still state to be saved?