Browser Inadequacy

This entry was originally at http://kingsley.blog-city.com/read/59595.htm

I just lost half an hours’ work. I typed out a good piece on mental models. I then tried to post it. My connection had gone kaput in the meantime and I got a “Cannot find website” error. I tried to refresh the page, to no avail. I tried to go back, only to face a blank form. Now that is annoying.

We’re building more and more complex applications which work from the web browser. Unfortunately, the browser is still remarkably primitive. I’m all for avoiding bloat in software, but let us look at some practical considerations that need to go into browser design. Internet connectivity is still mostly through dial-up lines. It follows that browser design should focus on making life easier for us dial-up users. When I work on something for half an hour, I’d like the browser to offer to restore it for me. I know, you can work on Notepad and paste it into the form, but that is not the level of confidence we want to foster. Offline browsing was a cool idea. Let’s see more innovation focussed on dial-up users.

As an interetsing side-note, if my session expires before I post an entry to the blog, Blog-City saves the data and asks me to login again. Once I login, the entry is posted and I get a confirmation. That’s an example of good server side technology that prevents serious errors.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2003 at 4:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.