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Toasts are bad UX

maxschmitt.me

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Re: Toasts are bad UX

#191

Post by hunter2_ »

michaelmrose wrote: post #173
CRConrad wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toasts also give you a good place to put other shortcuts like “Item updated. [View item]” that make it much easier to act on state changes Not if they go away, and take their “[View item]” button with them, before you've had time to read the notification, decide if you want to click the button, and actually get your cursor there to click it. Which they usually do. So nyaaah, dubious benefit.

Should complex websites have a notification center where you can look at prior notifications? Would this be alike enough to existing desktop metaphors to be easily recognizable or simply confusing. Maybe your browser should could have an icon for same instead making it more standardized across different sites.

> Browsers that support JavaScript typically implement the Notification API. This API asks for user confirmation to allow popups and give the programmer the opportunity to display notifications with a text (body) along with an descriptive icon and header.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_notification#JavaScript

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#192

Post by is_true »

david_allison wrote: post #151
is_true wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have a source for that? I understand that Toast is the name given in Android

> Note that Snackbars are preferred for brief messages while the app is in the foreground. https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Toast

That's the Android widget, not material design which is used for YouTube's UI

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#193

Post by Y-bar »

storafrid wrote: post #185
Y-bar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debouncing is a known development tool for most non-immediate actions. It's related UI concept of locking individual UI elements is also well understood by many users (not by that technical name, but by "it's working on my action" kind of understanding). > optimistically show the user a success result? I don't particularly like React, but this a core feature of such JS frontend frameworks, optimistically "succeed" wh…

Is this an LLM? :) The question was rhetorical. Both of these proposals have problems. But the main issue is that the author of the article is missing an angle of toasts as a UX concept.

From my perspective there was nothing rhetorical about that question as I occasionally encounter it as a serious thing. Some colleagues really do not want optimistic UI events. Some swear by them.

I don’t have any strong feelings one way or another as long as there is proper inline feedback.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#194

Post by Terr_ »

perlgeek wrote: post #30

> The "Undo" button in the toast is unnecessary because the user can just click the checkbox again I disagree with this part, at least in general. Having an Undo is very good if you have accidentally clicked somewhere and don't know precisely where, and you don't know the application well enough to easily undo based on the message alone.

Yeah, I've encountered that in a few systems: I'm aware I accidentally just changed the wrong thing but I don't know which wrong thing, there are no clues. This is especially problematic when there's a chance nothing changed, but you can't be sure.

To illustrate the problem with "perfect storm" example, suppose a your back is turned and a ball rolls of the shelf and hits the keyboard. Did anything change? What changed? How do you fix it?

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#195

Post by hk__2 »

hunter2_ wrote: post #186
hk__2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this specific example you do have an Undo button: the checkbox itself. The issue here is that the checkbox doesn’t match the exact state it’s supposed to represent: if you check it, for a few seconds it’s checked but the video is not yet saved; if you uncheck it it’s not unsaved until the toast appear. If you repeatedly check/uncheck it you don’t know in which state you end up.

> In this specific example you do have an Undo button: the checkbox itself. That's false. The checkbox itself is not a viable undo button under any circumstances in this specific example (i.e., you accidentally clicked but have no idea where, and let's assume you have no idea of that particular checkbox's state prior to the accident). Any adjacent checkbox would have extremely similar plausibility for a user wonderin…

> i.e., you accidentally clicked but have no idea where, and let's assume you have no idea of that particular checkbox's state prior to the accident

That the same for every single checkbox in every single form on the Web.

Even in the unlikely case in which you clicked on the lists button that opens the popin and then accidently clicked on a checkbox without seeing which one and without seeing the checkbox state change, you still have the list of lists on the screen and you can still choose if you do want this video in this list(s) or not.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#196

Post by steve_adams_86 »

I think there’s a critical distinction to make here.

Some UI can model what the users interacting with accurately enough that updating the state of the model is a great way to communicate changes. If you remove an item from a list, you can demonstrate success through that interaction without using a toast.

On the other hand, sometimes the UI doesn’t reflect the model at all and there’s no sensible way to communicate with the user what has occurred outside of something like a toast.

The trouble is, you get inconsistent feedback mechanisms if you leverage both online feedback and toast feedback.

If this was an easy problem one way or the other, I’m fairly confident we’d have seen a convergence of implementations at some point and everyone would use a fairly common convention. It’s not that easy, though.

Good UX is really hard. People thinking it’s this simple are actually why I stopped doing it as much. Back end programming gives you so much more freedom to explore problems and people respect it to some degree. With UI/UX, especially UI design, everyone seems to think they know better already.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#197

Post by TeMPOraL »

hunter2_ wrote: post #191
michaelmrose wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should complex websites have a notification center where you can look at prior notifications? Would this be alike enough to existing desktop metaphors to be easily recognizable or simply confusing. Maybe your browser should could have an icon for same instead making it more standardized across different sites.

> Browsers that support JavaScript typically implement the Notification API. This API asks for user confirmation to allow popups and give the programmer the opportunity to display notifications with a text (body) along with an descriptive icon and header. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_notification#JavaScript

Of course, this is just abused by sites to spew their garbage outside the confines of their own pages, which makes the API effectively dead.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#198

Post by xyst »

I hate toasts too. I even dislike the name of this UI element - “toast”. Unlike a hamburger menu, the toast element doesn’t even resemble toasted bread slice. Or is it supposed to represent the short lived aspect of a toast between 2 parties?

Some sites even have toasts on mobile which block content. Have even tapped some of those actions by accident.

Also, since they are ephemeral. How does it impact a user on a screen reader? Is there an audio cue indicating a toast is on the screen?

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#199

Post by codazoda »

xyst wrote: post #198

I hate toasts too. I even dislike the name of this UI element - “toast”. Unlike a hamburger menu, the toast element doesn’t even resemble toasted bread slice. Or is it supposed to represent the short lived aspect of a toast between 2 parties? Some sites even have toasts on mobile which block content. Have even tapped some of those actions by accident. Also, since they are ephemeral. How does it impact a user on a scr…

I think they are called toasts because they pop up from the bottom, similar to a piece of toast popping out of a pop-up toaster oven.

I used these to display errors in an internal web app once, which was a major mistake. The users almost never saw them and when they did they didn't see them long enough to be able to communicate what the message said, often trying to paraphrase.

I agree they are bad UX for most things.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#200

Post by apeescape »

xyst wrote: post #198

I hate toasts too. I even dislike the name of this UI element - “toast”. Unlike a hamburger menu, the toast element doesn’t even resemble toasted bread slice. Or is it supposed to represent the short lived aspect of a toast between 2 parties? Some sites even have toasts on mobile which block content. Have even tapped some of those actions by accident. Also, since they are ephemeral. How does it impact a user on a scr…

I think it's called a toast because it (usually) appears by jumping from one of the edges, like a piece of toast jumps from the toaster.
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