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Refresh Is Sacred (tbray.org)
Several Slashdot readers share a blog post: There are two kinds of client applications: The first kind has a "refresh" or "reload" button to make sure your app's in sync with its server's view of the world. The second kind is broken. Of late, I have to deal regularly with several apps, notably including an emailer and car-sharing service, that lack such a button. I can imagine why -- a customer focused product manager said "Steve Jobs taught us that fewer controls are better and we should just take care of making sure we're in sync with the cloud. So lose the button. Except, it doesn't work. Apparently nobody in the world is smart enough to arrange flawlessly reliable hands-off client/cloud synchronization. There are times when you just know that what you're seeing on the screen is wrong and if the stupid app would just assume everything it knows is wrong and ask for a brain transplant from its server, things would be OK.
Some applications have started using a "scroll past the top to refresh" crap and if you don't know the application can do that, then you don't know it has the feature in the first place.
#DeleteFacebook
I don't even bother using Firefox's refresh button, it doesn't actually request the page a second time. CTRL-F5 is now the default refresh.
You check in, you add your flight details to the portfolio screen, but then you can't navigate back to the barcode without activating some sort of action to invoke the refresh.
Every UI should have a specific button that allows you to do a manual refresh. "Hidden" UIs or weird actions (such as dragging down on Android, which sometimes refreshes certain apps) are no good, especially for non-technical users. Especially where it's non-trivial to even REALLY exit and application and start it up again.
For United, I have to use Android's task switcher to kill the app, then start it up again. Now it'll refresh successfully.
Stop with the fancy UIs and allow people to use technology to work!
Bandwidth, processing, and batteries are not in endless supply. Some sacred things (like absolutely live-synced all the time globally aware perfect client apps that are up to the nanosecond with back end data) are absurd perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good goals in the real, actual, finite world.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Steve Jobs taught us that fewer controls are better
...and real-world experience teaches me that Steve Jobs was wrong.
Eliminating the means by which users can control what applications do is not a good thing. Sure, have some sort of "auto" mode for people who don't care, but leave the ability to control the operations of an application for those that do, or for those times when the "don't care" folks really need a manual override.
This is particularly true with things like refreshing. In addition to being able to trigger a refresh on demand, it's also important to be able to stop automatic refreshing for those times when you really, really don't want the current data to change.
Tog's a great guy and all but the single worst thing he did to the web was to convince everyone to kill the ComboBox, leaving everyone to reimplement it in javascript, shittily.
"'Steve Jobs taught us that fewer controls are better...'" Strict adherence to principles without exceptions is (almost, :P ) always a recipe for mediocrity at best, disaster at worst. Jobs was good at insisting on good design when it apparently conflicted with cost cutting. He was never a systems usability expert himself, otherwise some long-time Apple features and lack of features would not have stayed around so long. Automatic synchronization might be workable if it included an elaborate and well-designed "preferences" setup (I'd argue that most applications' Preferences are very poorly designed). No two persons have exactly the same needs, so one-size-fits-all is doomed to fail. Add the button by default, with an option to get rid of it after checking off some preferences to how automatic synchronization/updating should work. Not having room on a phone's screen to have a button for it isn't an excuse to not have it, it's a reason for redesigning the phones' interfaces.