Connect/disconnect UX could be better

Posted about 1 year ago by Wes Garland

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Wes Garland
Wes Garland

When I switch apps and/or lock my Phone, I'm guessing that Maestro loses its connection to the `/notifications` websocket.

This has the effect that almost *every time* I come back to the Maestro page, I have the "You are not connected to Maestro, ensure the device is on and you are connected to its network" screen visible. Then after 3-4s, I get the "Connecting" dialog with the yellow exclamation mark, and about 250ms after that, I am connected to Maestro.

Steps to reproduce:
- Load Maestro web ui
- Lock phone with side button
- Count to 5
- Unlock Phone with thumb print
- Observe "You are not connected to Maestro" dialog

I know roughly what's going on under the hood, but as a user I'm sort of expecting an app-like experience, especially with the SPA implementation choice.  I think what's going on is that you're detecting the broken websocket right away, displaying the red ! dialog (maybe when the browser is no longer visible to the user), and then the yellow triangle dialog gets shown when the "hey I'm back" event fires.

So this kind of leaves the user who put his phone in his pocket for a minute with an experience that suggests the Maestro network went on/off, when it didn't; it's just that the phone shutdown the websocket.

I think it would "feel" better if you went straight to the reconnecting dialog with the throbber right away, and maybe only displayed the work error after a longer timeout.  Users are okay with an "I need to reload screen" when coming back to an app, not so much a screen that says "your network is broken".

FYI the app wakes up before the `/fixture_profile` load happens - nice job :)

OH - I just realized, there might be better way to handle this. When the app comes back to life, can it reach out to the back end for the last request id it got?  If this page sent it, the state should be up to date, so you can keep the app "live" instead of reloading.

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