UX for sleeping tabs

[cosmotic]

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.

[#2]

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/

[#3]

@HotCakeX 

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.

[#4]

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?

[#5]

Edge can (and should) "be the better person" and not show the welcome screen. Don't follow the lemmings off the cliff.

Any unnecessary prompt shown more than zero times is a bug IMHO.

As a user and UX professional, I am here announcing that I consider that prompt a problem. No matter how small you think it is or how important you think it is to explain to users that one feature (out of thousands), I believe the cost to be higher than the benefit.

If the sleeping tabs had no negative side effect (missing notifications in something like facebook or linked in), there would be no reason for the dialog explaining them, except maybe to brag about the feature at the users expense. I presume the implementation is such that it just freezes all JS running on the page, suspending the timeouts and intervals until the tab is focused again. If so, maybe letting them run once a minute or something would be a nice compromise?

The discards I was referring to was the about:discards feature hinted at edge://discards/

[#6]

the welcome screens aren't bad.
more then zero times? heh okay.
wish you luck.

[#7]

You make it sound like I'm crazy but I did download edge with intention to replace google chrome and have decided to go back to chrome because of the bugs and nonsense like those modals. If the edge team wants users to switch, the edge team need to work with users, not against them.

[#8]

Like i said, it's not the default nor the expected behavior to show sleeping tabs explanation prompt more than 1 time, if you see it more than one time, use the feedback button on Edge to report it.

[#9]

The sleeping tab explanation prompt may show only one time, but there are MANY other one-time prompts that coincide with starting to use edge. Modals (and especially modal tutorials) are (as far as I can tell) universally accepted to be UX anti-patterns. Numerous instances of them, one right after another, is an unintentional but predictable outcome of these sorts of siloed efforts to add "helpful" feedback.

[#10]

Nothing is anti pattern here.
what other prompt do you see? it's not tutorial like game tutorial, just bunch of text.

[#11]

> Nothing is anti pattern here.

modals (in most cases) are most certainly an anti-patern.
Realizing I'm making an appeal to an authority, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/modal-nonmodal-dialog/

Another appeal to authority: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/win-dialog-box#modal-dialog-boxes

Advice to avoid modal dialog boxes is present in every single UI/UX/HCI textbook I've ever read.

If the sleeping tab exclusively benefits the user and there's nothing to worry about, why even alert them that it's happening?

[#12]

The thing is, nothing is absolute, a concept that is true in one place might not be true somewhere else.
the reason for letting user know what's going on with their tabs is just to notify them, Once in their life time, about this new feature, and why their tabs are turning gray.
people might see it and think there is a bug.
also this prompt doesn't appear until the tab is gone to sleep. by default the timeout is set to 2 hours.

[#13]

So don't turn the tabs gray when they are sleeping?

Alternative:
A non-modal notification pops up when the user clicks on their first gray tab.

[#14]

I should add that, sure, nothing is absolute; but this use case is a totally clear instance where a modal should not be used.

[#15]

Yeah tabs can not be turned gray and instead get an icon like a moon icon or something like that,
but still, there needs to be a notification or something shown to the user explaining what they are seeing quickly in a non-intrusive way.

if you have problem with that notification, you can send feedback directly to developers using the feedback button on Edge.
you can attach any image or drawing that you might have as an alternative design to propose.

[#16]

The blog article suggested I use this forum to send feedback; was it wrong?

[#17]

I just see devs mentioning in various posts to use that, that's why I said it, that method is specially useful for bugs, performance issues and such, since it sends machine level logs to help understand the problem, but if you post them here that'll at least give me a chance to view your proposed design too :)