Have you ever seen someone click a link over and over waiting for the next page to load? It’s a bad habit that’s actually counter-productive because it causes the next page’s loading to start over. This user behavior phenomenon occurs because browsers do a bad job giving feedback to the user that their click was successful and the next page is loading.
So what’s the problem? Feedback proximity.
Users aren’t looking for feedback where browsers have a progress bar. Users are staring at the page where they clicked and wondering why a new page hasn’t loaded. The loading feedback needs to be closer to the action (the click). That’s why I’ve developed linkNotify—to enhance the feedback of link clicks to improve the user’s experience of control.
linkNotify 2.0 is a jQuery plugin that provides better user feedback on clicked links than the browser by displaying a color-changeable progress bar behind the link.
Brian, it took me a minute to realize this was a progress bar behind the link text until I watched that very short video. I'd prefer to rely on the progress feedback in the browser. I wonder what happens when you're hitting a slow server or 404. I can't tell if the end point on the bar would be the link, but assume so. Would it just be full? That would seem less than ideal feedback if that were the case.
Yea, the end point would be the end of the link, at which point it would just end. The time of the animation is 5 seconds, which should capture most waits before the new page *begins* loading and the screen refreshes. If I make the animation any slower to capture slower load times it may not be noticed.
And I agree -- the browser is the most effective in terms of predicting the true load time, but it's so far from the user's focal point (the link) that they don't always notice the next page is loading, so they keep clicking the link. This plugin is meant to give a sense of control and immediacy through feedback proximity.
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