Peter Lyons

The wheel of not waiting

September 18, 2009

So flash videos are everywhere now. Generally as they load they show some spinning wheel type graphic. The problem is as an end user, I have no visual differentiation between a video that is loading slowly and a video sitting there waiting for TCP from an overloaded server that is simply never going to work, and certainly not in a timeframe smaller than my attention budget. Show me whether or not you are getting any data, and I might be willing to wait, but if you have me watching your spinner until your TCP connection times out, you are just frustrating me.