Ogre's blog

There are many indicators for activity of ajax but most of them really sucks. Here are my favorites (that I use when creating applications that use both ajax and Tangra framework).

Имамного индикатори за активност на аякс, но повечето от тях са пълна лайна. Ето моите любими, които използвам:

Medium sized indicator useful for indicating activity of grids / forms / big content boxes. Optimized for dark background. Среден размер индикатор, подходящ за показване на активност на таблици / формуляри / големи карета със съдържание. Оптимизиран за тъмен фон.

Small indicators useful for grid row, form field or small content boxes. Малки индикатори, подходящи за редове на таблици, полета на формуляри и малки карета със съдържание.

Big indicator useful for more bold statement "I am WORKING, wait a few seconds (god damn it!)". Голям индикатор, който може да се използва за по-солидно показване, че се извършва някаква дейност и трябва да се изчака.

Vary small indicator useful for grids with vary small font size. Also can be used to show that required form field is missing. Много малък индикатор, подходящ за таблици с много дребен шрифт. Може да се използва и за показване на непопълнени задължителни полета във формуляр.

Medium sized.

Some advices:

• don't use indicators that spin / move too fast -- it is annoying.
• don't use many simultaneously running indicators on same page -- it is VARY annoying, confusing, ugly and looks unprofessional. Also think about epileptic people -- you may seriously hurt someone.
• don't use too fancy indicators -- it looks unprofessional (unless you are creating site for county fair or circus ;-))
• preload your indicators.
• don't use indicators for fast simple repetitive tasks (ajax requests that complete vary fast (bellow 1 sec) (that may easily happen in intranet environments)) -- if you show your indicator each time when user enters a row in a table, about row #50 -- he/she will start to hate both you and your indicator ;-). It may look cool to use indicator but it becomes annoying if abused. At least provide option to turn off animated indicators.

If you need indicator that suits your color scheme -- try this link http://www.ajaxload.info/ . There you can choose indicator's type, foreground and background and it will be generated for you.

This entry was posted by Ognyan Bankov on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 01:03:56 and is filed under Web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.