Not planned Disable the AJAX loading .gif for most default actions

Chris D

XenForo developer
Staff member
The animated .gif loads for almost all AJAX actions even those that are usually nearly instant such as liking a post or launching an overlay.

My suggestion is to either disable that completely for some smaller actions or add some code that only shows the loading gif after X seconds have passed.
 
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Do you mean this thing ?

upload_2013-10-25_10-13-8.webp

like when I tried to watch this thread.

(Took me 5 times to screencapture it).

On my slow Xenforo site ... I see that AJAX loading thing alot.
Here ... only for a brief second.
 
Personally, I think a delayed loading image is bad UI.
I don't necessarily disagree with this.

My preference would be for the image not to show up at all on most AJAX actions unless it is something expected to take a long time, such as validating and submitting a form or indeed something as intensive as a cache rebuild.
 
The animation seems superfluous on actions that take a very small amount of time to complete anyway.
 
I like it appearing even on things such as a like. If it's a site that loads slow, that may take a second. Having a link that doesn't immediately do anything would make me think the site is dysfunctional. I realize that without that appearing, when I click like and it's done loading it changes to 'unlike' and shows a new div (the likes summary) but still, on a delay it could seem like it's broken.

That said, it is pretty easy to disable, I think it's just a matter of including global: false in the arguments for the ajax request.
 
The animation seems superfluous on actions that take a very small amount of time to complete anyway.

Unfortunately the time it takes to complete isn't a constant. Even very quick sites sometimes will be slow to do an action if something else is hogging the cpu.
 
I personally like it showing up, even if for a split second. It makes it completely obvious that "Hey, this page is doing something via Ajax". It might just be me and the fact that 90% of the time when I'm on here I'm downloading something, so my Internet is slow and warnts the image being displayed.
 
Don't remove it.

I complained to @digitalpoint for having it at the bottom of the page on his site...

He then said he was planning to remove it and I said no.

It is useful for people with slow internet connections - it may be quick for you, but maybe not for other's. Liking a post may take a few seconds for some people!

As well as that, seeing it tells people something is waiting to happen - if they click a button and nothing appears/happens, they may think it is broken.

Liam
 
It is useful for people with slow internet connections - it may be quick for you, but maybe not for other's. Liking a post may take a few seconds for some people!

As well as that, seeing it tells people something is waiting to happen - if they click a button and nothing appears/happens, they may think it is broken.
Exactly my point. I'm not fortunate enough to have Fios, and my Internet is usually always tied up in updates - which means pages take about 2-6 seconds to load, the Ajax indicator lets me know my request is still processing.

Not to mention the amount of people who do still have dialup or satellite Internet.
 
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