Forum Discussion
UX for sleeping tabs
This modal seems totally unnecessary. If users are being confused by sleeping tabs (notifications for sleeping tabs not happening), that sounds like an implementation problem. No users will be expecting this dialog and thus it will be a very abrupt interrupting demanding attention and most users won't even understand what it's explaining. "Got it" is a cute but inappropriate way to dismiss a dialog (That was apparently so important it had to be modal).
This flashy tooltip is unnecessarily attention grabbing. The main content of the tooltip is the title, not the fact it's sleeping. If the edge team thinks its important to indicate a tab is sleeping, why is it hidden in a tooltip very few even use?
It seems to me like both of these UI elements are acknowledging the sleeping feature tab is broken and are relying on users attention and cognition to repair the broken feature.
- That prompt is only shown to the user one time, for the first time, that's it.
user is Not constantly bombarded by that prompt.
if you are using an older Edge version and get a new update that comes with sleeping tabs, you get that notification explaining to you what it means when a tab is gray, that's it, you click got it and you won't see it again.
Sleeping tabs is not broken, it's fully functional and does Not need any special attention from user whatsoever.
sleeping tabs automatically wake up when user clicks on them.
it is also smart enough not to put certain tabs to sleep to prevent from breaking their functionalities.
you can get more info about them here: edge://discards/There are a *lot* of one-time dialogs that happen practically all at once when a user starts using Edge. I was victim to this just yesterday on my mac where Edge showed a full-screen-but-not-Proper-full-screen window covering up my whole screen with a gradient and there was no obvious way to close it. This sort of thing is simply unacceptable.
My expectation after installing a web browser is opening the thing and typing a URL in and seeing that page. No requests to import bookmarks, no requests to attach accounts, no tutorials or introductions pr pleadings or love letters from the developers, no alerts about (broken) features like sleeping tabs, etc.
I very much want not to have a modal explain what a gray tab is. I want a tooltip with similar text as the one I screenshotted but WITHOUT an animation or color (unless its turning the "this tab is sleeping" text gray).
I say its a broken feature because it apparently required a modal tutorial (a UX anti-pattern) to explain what it is. The user story is likely "I want background tabs to use less resources", that can be implemented numerous ways. The way the edge team decided to implement it appears to cause user confusion when they no longer receive notifications on tabs they thought they would receive notifications. The edge team, thankfully, realized this shortcoming but solved it improperly. Modal dialog boxes with long-winded technical and in-the-end often misunderstood descriptions do NOT solve the problem.
Discards sounds like a edge-authors white list of web pages edge would have otherwise broken. A better solution is to not break those pages.
- all popular browsers, if not all of them, ask for account login and show you welcome screens.
if that prompt was shown to you more than once, like 3 times etc. you can submit a feedback using feedback button on Edge, because that's not how it's supposed to be.
there is no problem with that prompt, just a regular small thing to let the user know about the gray tabs, that's it.
which website's notification is suppressed as a result of that tab going to sleep?
discards sound like what?
