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NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

ricostacruz.com

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Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#81

Post by lelandbatey »

mistercow wrote: post #56

It's nice looking, but I'd like to see some actual user testing on whether this kind of progress bar performs its most important task. "What?" I hear you asking, "Of course it does! It shows how much longer you'll have to wait." In which case I must inform you that giving the user information is not the most important function of a progress bar. The most important function of a progress bar is Time Travel. That is to…

This is 100% true. I shared this story in another comment yesterday, but I'll share it again here:

On one of my one-off side projects(http://gifmachine.xwl.me/), there's a rather silly example of the importance of loading bars.

In the first version, the design was quite bare. There were a couple of textinputs and a "make gif" button. The way the code happens to work, when you press the "make gif" button the web page would just sit there till you where re-directed to your finished gif.

The first bit of advice I got from anyone was "this is sooo slow, what's happening?" The problem was, I didn't actually have any way to understand how long/what was going on in the backend. So I decided to take the next best approach:

I fake it.

As soon as you click the "make a gif" button, the bar starts loading. However, that bar has no basis in reality. It takes exactly 40 seconds to fill up, no matter what's going on.

However, everyone loves it! All the comments I got said how much better it seemed to make the experience. Even though it's a fake loading bar.

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#83

Post by mihok »

stinky613 wrote: post #73

I worked, for a brief instance in time, at a roadside produce stand. At first I got really hung up on whether or not I could give a customer an accurate, precise answer to their question. With time, I realized that 19/20 customers didn't want the correct answer; they simply wanted a confident answer to allay their concerns. To wit: a customer asked for a tomato with qualities A, B, and C (anyone who thinks that such…

Thank you, reading the first couple of comments really threw me off. I completly agree. Although the spinnging wheels works for me IF it say freezes when its not actually processing data or anything other than waiting for a response or something. I still personally prefer the progress bar, the best is combining the two. Showing that the computer (read: browser) hasnt frozen, and that we're progressing in time. Up until now, I was just wishing there was a better way of showing this other than a moving zebra stripe progress bar. This looks like something I'll use.

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#84

Post by rstacruz »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #74

Very nice! Have you considered going by "Ricosta Cruz"? It sounds kind of cool that way. NProgress is perfect for something I'm just about to finish, thanks!

I'm not sure about that—"Rico Sta. Cruz" isn't some pseudonym I can restyle, it's my actual real name :)

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#85

Post by hadem »

ronaldx wrote: post #71

I find these fake progress bars a borderline-dark pattern: in general, the goal is to deceive users into waiting for progress that isn't truly happening, with the goal of holding their eyeballs.

How is this "fake"? I can set the exact percentage of the progress bar.

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#86

Post by guynamedloren »

lelandbatey wrote: post #81
mistercow wrote: post #56

It's nice looking, but I'd like to see some actual user testing on whether this kind of progress bar performs its most important task. "What?" I hear you asking, "Of course it does! It shows how much longer you'll have to wait." In which case I must inform you that giving the user information is not the most important function of a progress bar. The most important function of a progress bar is Time Travel. That is to…

This is 100% true. I shared this story in another comment yesterday, but I'll share it again here: On one of my one-off side projects( http://gifmachine.xwl.me/ ), there's a rather silly example of the importance of loading bars. In the first version, the design was quite bare. There were a couple of textinputs and a "make gif" button. The way the code happens to work, when you press the "make gif" button the web pag…

This is a fantastic hack: it's fake, but everyone still loves it. It makes the user experience better. Nice work.

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#87

Post by jamoes »

stinky613 wrote: post #73

I worked, for a brief instance in time, at a roadside produce stand. At first I got really hung up on whether or not I could give a customer an accurate, precise answer to their question. With time, I realized that 19/20 customers didn't want the correct answer; they simply wanted a confident answer to allay their concerns. To wit: a customer asked for a tomato with qualities A, B, and C (anyone who thinks that such…

> He promptly told me that 1) I was diametrically incorrect in my choice for meeting her needs, and 2) it didn't matter, even in the least.

This is why I hate talking to sales people in brick-and-mortar stores. Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for the longer-term (ie, when you get home and realize you made the wrong choice).

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#88

Post by NathanKP »

chrisfarms wrote: post #54

Is this a part of a (very slowly) building trend towards a chrome-less browser? Long ago we used to "login" to a site using BasicAuth and the browser defined login box.... it wasn't flexible/pretty enough so we started using s and integrated them into the page. We had a path-like URL structure that we used to get to our documents, but our documents became more complex and the path-like structure became less human fri…

Very interesting idea. I can definitely see the progression towards a more minimal browser that offloads functionality which used to be part of the browser into the page. However, I think we have reached a minimal point where browsers have already stripped down as far as they can.

Looking at a browser like Google Chrome basically all that is left is tabs, forward and back buttons, refresh button, search/url bar, HTTPS indicator, and right hand menu button.

We couldn't get rid of the back and forward buttons because while JavaScript navigation works inside the page, it doesn't work very well to go back from your site to the site that the user came from, because security is designed to prevent you from easily reading history.

Additionally the refresh button couldn't be replaced by an in page control because if the JavaScript in the page has an error and stops working the refresh also stops working, which would make people unable to refresh the page.

I wouldn't trust an HTTPS icon that was powered by JavaScript inside the page so that also has to be part of the chrome.

The only item on that list that could be removed is the right hand menu button. And since that does stuff like print, bookmark, and settings that also doesn't work as part of the webpage itself.

But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and we'll find a way to strip the browser down even more, but I don't think that will happen until we develop voice, gesture, or thought controlled interface devices that are faster and more efficient than typing into a search bar or clicking a button. Then we can get rid of all the buttons and controls completely. But at that point the entire experience of browsing would be extremely different, not just the browser chrome.

Re: NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars

#89

Post by stinky613 »

jamoes wrote: post #87
stinky613 wrote: post #73

I worked, for a brief instance in time, at a roadside produce stand. At first I got really hung up on whether or not I could give a customer an accurate, precise answer to their question. With time, I realized that 19/20 customers didn't want the correct answer; they simply wanted a confident answer to allay their concerns. To wit: a customer asked for a tomato with qualities A, B, and C (anyone who thinks that such…

> He promptly told me that 1) I was diametrically incorrect in my choice for meeting her needs, and 2) it didn't matter, even in the least. This is why I hate talking to sales people in brick-and-mortar stores. Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for the longer-term (ie, when you get home and realize you made…

> Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for the longer-term

Well, that depends--and that's where my metaphor breaks down. The customers went home satisfied and remained satisfied (at least, that's what their consistent repeat business and smiling faces would suggest).

Tomatoes and website loading times matter to you in the here and now but don't have any lasting effect on your life. That's not the case for making a major purchase.

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