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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.
In India cows are also sacred. You sacred cows! Moo! Moo! Refreshed moo!
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
and Don Norman, who has something to say on the matter.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
What the internet needs, perhaps, is a Staleness indicator.
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Studies have shown that minimal design and flat design are worse for productivity and ease of use. But it was trendy and cool. Thank God "Trendy" does not last long. I am starting to see flat design and single page websites fade away... Minimal design will not be far behind. Eventually, we will get to where we were 5 years ago!
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.
Apparently nobody in the world is smart enough to arrange flawlessly reliable hands-off client/cloud synchronization.
Actually, there a plenty of people smart enough to ensure perfect synchronization. The problem is that not that many are interested in wasting their time on building an "app" that will likely be discarded in a few years for shitty pay. Also, if you aren't using a language that compiles to a natively executable binary then you have failed before even beginning.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If it's a web-based application, MAYBE.
If it's a server-to-server or client-to-server app, then a well-designed one will NOT require a refresh button.
Either because clients and servers are well-written AND state changes occur using a well-defined protocol that ensures synchronization
OR because the client automatically refreshes on its own according to some policy.
For example: IRC Clients do not require a refresh button to keep your view of a Chat room and its On-screen userlist accurate after the /NAMES request, because (Non-buggy) IRC servers always send the proper MODE, JOIN, PART, KICK, and QUIT messages
initial
to servers and clients over the TCP channel to keep both sides of the conversation updated with the current information as changes occur.
Also, while the protocol is versatile enough a client could technically re-request information and force a self-Refresh of its view:
you don't see a REFRESH button on any major IRC client, and in fact, the operation would be a major waste of resources.
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.
"'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.
Automatic updates don't remove the need to inform the user of the current application state.
The user needs to know when was the last time that the content was updated; if the page becomes stalled (i.e. the time since last update is longer than expected), this might be because no new content has been created, but also because somewhere in the system there has been a hiccup that prevented an automatic refresh. No matter how reliable you make the system, there will always be delays, and some users will get the rare connection breakdown.
Providing a Refresh button allows the user to test that the system is still working, requesting the program to update the time-since-last-update and confirm that the current content is up to date.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
This kind of thing really pisses me off. 5 minutes ago from when? How often is it updating? Has updating gotten stuck?
I think a lot of dissatisfaction with alleged autorefresh is that nagging feeling that something has stopped updating. For a long time there has been a trend on various blogs and forums to stamp items "updated 5 minutes ago" or whatnot, but no true time/date stamps. How about "updated at 11:59 am (5 minutes ago)". Just lately I've been seeing some forums go back to real time/date stamps.
It's the uncertainty that is often the irritant, at least to me.
One hard problem is naming things. Anyone remember what the other one is?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I was hitting refresh on this very site for the last couple of days, and I got nothing.