141–150 of 401 posts
For anyone as confused as I was, this article is not about toasted bread [1], but about a type of UI widget [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_(food) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toast_(computing)
Where does the name toast come from anyway?
> A toast is a ritual during which a drink is taken as an expression of honor or goodwill.
I think the actual issue is that Google makes bad UX often, and not toasts in general. Toasts themselves can be done well, but like every UI and UX element, they need to have some thought. I know Google have some good UI (sometimes UX on Android) every now and then but they are so fractured as a company, with so much product and feature churn, that their UX is all over the place. Every single Google app reinvents how…
For anyone as confused as I was, this article is not about toasted bread [1], but about a type of UI widget [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_(food) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toast_(computing)
For me the worse aspect is that they disappear (too quickly), and that they sometimes unnecessarily draw attention to themselves for success messages where you would trivially assume the action to succeed. The combination of the two is particularly vexing: Your attention gets unnecessarily diverted, but you don’t know if it wasn’t actually important because it disappeared too fast. Conversely, there’s also a variatio…
To me, the imply that there's a hypothetical event log that I could view if I needed to look back to see what happened. In reality, that event log doesn't exist in an accessible way, and it's true that once the toast message times out, it's gone forever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing. Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was ac…
I disagree on that—in the YouTube example specifically this isn't necessarily a problem, but the toast serves a valuable purpose in the archive in that it tells you again which button it was that you pressed. There have been countless times in cases like that where the toast has saved me and allowed me to undo a misclick. I can see the argument that there are certain places where people use toasts that are unnecessar…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing. Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was ac…
I mentioned this in another comment, but the whole reason the archive is able to be optimistic is partially because they offer the undo via toast. Otherwise its likely they would add an 'are you sure' plus a loading-state when doing these "semi-destructive" actions.
A toast makes sense only in 1 case: when it's a notification that is unrelated with the current action of the user. Similar to OS types of notification that the defunct Growl (memories) invented. Any feedback from a user action should be done within the context of the user action. If the action is async, it should be clear and the feedback should instantaneously indicate that the action is queued for processing. In t…
There is no context for this, and often an action is required. And even if not, it is certainly useful to confirm with the user that their action was detected.
I agree with post and don't like toasts either. The thing is, they don't solve a UX problem as much act as a catch-all solution for "respond to user action". It is easier for orgs to shove everything in a toast than to think about more practical places to put the data.
I have seen modals used to communicate status and reaffirming information that does not require action, and between the two, toasts are a better fit. That said, you still need to be smart where the bar is in terms of what is worth communicating. None of us want applications to blather on about stuff we don't care about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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A lesson for us all: no matter how obvious a metaphor may seem to us, it isn't obvious to everyone. 90% sure it's called this because toast is what pops up out of a toaster. https://dribbble.com/shots/3072186-Pop-up-toaster-motion-des...
ETA: If they actually behaved like that, it would help with OP's issue with them-- pop out of "the toaster", where you clicked to initate the action, so you'd be more likely to notice. Seems his complaint was in large part that they appear somewhere else. (So they're not really "toasts": At least my toaster doesn't have a teleportation function, to make the toast appear wherever the toaster designer has more or less randomly decideded it should. It just pops up the bread in the same old boring position where I know to look for it.)