April’s in the spot light – Pressing buttons (!)

One of the biggest or even the BIGGEST factors in a users experience of any application is responsiveness.

Responsiveness is the speed with which information is delivered to you, or the speed at which you the end user can use that information, from your actions.  The later is a  real subtle point, if you give the user loads of data quickly and presented poorly – then it takes a while for them to turn it into meaningful information in their head.  (prizes goes to Google for original search interface that was far less complicated than anybody else’s!)

So one of the issues in the new web world (I was careful not to make it sound like this effected web 2.0 only, as they call it), is if you press a button for a new action before the data is fully downloaded and rendered (displayed), what happens?

It *should* ignore any continuing action and now fetch the new data you requested, overriding all other instructions… Sounds easy right?  Well just try pressing loads of buttons really fast in your web app and see what happens

slow up pressing baby!

We are just going to have to work it out like mature adults

So, even though *cough* we allow this happen in our code and get it right.  It just drops everything, as if it has won the lottery and cancelled all other engagements for the day (wouldn’t you?), not everyone’s software does and this is a leading issue in usability…

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