Re: [Usability] FW: UI Responsiveness

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Dec 1, 2007, at 1:56 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> ...
> > On 29 Nov 2007, at 22:58, Martin Harris wrote:
> > ...
> > > Also, has there been any talk about making UIs accountable for real-
> > > time responsiveness (low-latency interactivity)? Is there anything
> > > in the overall system that could require a UI to respond in 10
> > > seconds, 1 second, etc?
> ...
> One example is that Mac OS X's "spinning beachball of death" cursor
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_wait_cursor> is not (usually) 
> set by the application. It is set by the underlying toolkit, if the 
> application has not examined its event queue in the past ~2 seconds. 
> That makes UIs "accountable" in the sense that the busy cursor is a 
> sign of a badly-written application, and users complain accordingly.
> ...

Similarly in Ubuntu, with "Visual Effects" turned on, a window goes 
grey if it has stopped responding for a second or two. Once it resumes 
responding, its colors return.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/