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I can't stand how the Facebook feed updates in realtime. I read a bit, leave the tab, and when I come back to it it updates, so I have to find my place again (w

I can't stand how the Facebook feed updates in realtime. I read a bit, leave the tab, and when I come back to it it updates, so I have to find my place again (which I don't do, I just go "screw facebook" and close the tab ^^). The same for forums, if I want to see new or changed posts, I'll hit F5 -- and when I don't press F5, it's not because I forgot, but because I don't want to. Pressing it for me is a great way to make me go elsewhere; or in the case of facebook, to stay and resent you. I don't need to know in realtime how many people are on my website. I need to know how many there were last week, and compare that with the week before that. Likewise, I don't really need to see a post the instant it was made. At least for me, the internet is great partly because people chose what they do how and at what pace, because it's more like a book and less like TV, and making it more like TV is not improvement. This is not against the article per se, which I found very very interesting and thorough, just something I have to get off my chest in general. Though I really disagree with the article when it comes to the facebook feed, I think that should serve as an example for what not to do. Please, think twice, and never be too proud to get rid of a shiny gimmick when it turns out it doesn't actually improve anything. Let's not sleepwalk to a baseline of stuff we just do because everybody does it and because it's technically more complex. As Einstein said, anyone can make stuff more complex :P

spenuke 12y ago
"The internet is great partly because people chose what they do how and at what pace, because it's more like a book and less like TV, and making it more like TV is not improvement." Well worth thinking about.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  What's great about the internet is that "it" doesn't have to choose whether to be more like a book or more like TV. It can do both things equally well, and whether you're making something "book-like" or "TV-like" it's cheaper to get started than it is to publish an actual book or TV program.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    It can do both equally well, but not at the same time.
benjoffe 12y ago
I would argue that in the case of Facebook's updating feed that the idea is fine, the implementation is buggy. What should happen is the new content is loaded above and instantaneously the document scroll position is updated to preserve the previous position. This will allow new content to come in without disrupting your experience.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  That's fine for a few updates, what if you have a lot? Memory may be cheap, but why not use it for interesting things? I mean, what problem does an auto-updating feed or endless scrolling solve that are easily dealth with by pagination, expire headers and manual refresh? Other than "user stickyness is not 100% yet" I mean, which I don't recognize as a valid problem.

spenuke 12y ago

"The internet is great partly because people chose what they do how and at what pace, because it's more like a book and less like TV, and making it more like TV is not improvement." Well worth thinking about.

sanderjd 12y ago
What's great about the internet is that "it" doesn't have to choose whether to be more like a book or more like TV. It can do both things equally well, and whether you're making something "book-like" or "TV-like" it's cheaper to get started than it is to publish an actual book or TV program.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  It can do both equally well, but not at the same time.

benjoffe 12y ago

I would argue that in the case of Facebook's updating feed that the idea is fine, the implementation is buggy. What should happen is the new content is loaded above and instantaneously the document scroll position is updated to preserve the previous position. This will allow new content to come in without disrupting your experience.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
That's fine for a few updates, what if you have a lot? Memory may be cheap, but why not use it for interesting things? I mean, what problem does an auto-updating feed or endless scrolling solve that are easily dealth with by pagination, expire headers and manual refresh? Other than "user stickyness is not 100% yet" I mean, which I don't recognize as a valid problem.