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LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

loadership.com

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#12
post #3

I wish loaders would provide some feedback on what is going on. So often, I look at a loader and think "How long will it take? Is it actually still doing something? Or should I try to reload the page?". Also, I often wonder why developers put tools like this on an extra domain instead of just putting it on a page or subdomain on their personal domain. Is there a reason for this that I am missing?

"Reticulating splines"

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#13
I did assume this was a webpack or otherwise package for loading css libraries. Took me a while to work out what it actually was.

Probably because I’ve had such headaches with webpack within rails and would love something to make it disappear (yes I know there are newer solutions but each one breaks things in new and unique ways).

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#16
post #3

I wish loaders would provide some feedback on what is going on. So often, I look at a loader and think "How long will it take? Is it actually still doing something? Or should I try to reload the page?". Also, I often wonder why developers put tools like this on an extra domain instead of just putting it on a page or subdomain on their personal domain. Is there a reason for this that I am missing?

> I wish loaders would provide some feedback on what is going on.

Often there isn't much feedback that it is easy for the client-side to give, it doesn't get any feedback until the first byte arrives in response and the time between request and first byte is far more significant than the rest of the transfer.

For things like file uploads/downloads proper progress is very useful and it is irritating when that isn't present (uploading photos to facebook on a slow connection for one example). Client-side things like number crunching too.

One problem you see sometimes where things can be easily monitored and the user informed, is that developers neglect to test in less than ideal conditions. The process works within a second on their devices and connections so they don't think to include a progress indicator, it is only when someone tried the result on something slower (an old slow CPU over a patchy mobile connection) that this becomes apparent. Also more detailed progress information is on the “nice to have” list so gets passed over in favour of bug fixes and other feature updates.

> I often wonder why developers put tools like this on an extra domain instead of

I think just fashion/appearances. It may also be an SEO thing (short URLs doing better there?).

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#17
Should we even bother with loaders? .. how can we load assets and carry out transactions that have async behaviour in another way?

Maybe load in the background or show some other content while a long operation is taking place?

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#19

I did assume this was a webpack or otherwise package for loading css libraries. Took me a while to work out what it actually was. Probably because I’ve had such headaches with webpack within rails and would love something to make it disappear (yes I know there are newer solutions but each one breaks things in new and unique ways).

Yeah. I also had to get down past all of their points before I saw the images to understand what this is. And one of the points ironically said that it didn't waste my time.

I've never heard the term "loader" being used here. Since a loader would be something that loads. These don't load anything, they just indicate that loading us happening. I typically call these "spinners" or sometimes "throbers" as that is what they do.

I would strongly recommend write "loading spinners" into one of the first sentences on the page.

Re: LoaderShip – CSS-Only Loaders

#20
Not specific to the submission, but I've basically lost all trust in loading spinners. Too many websites keep showing the loading animation indefinitely if anything unexpected fails (invalid response from backend, broken connection, …).

It's not even a problem with the concept itself (binary is/isn't loading), it's just bad implementations that have ruined it for me subconsciously.

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