new spinner is terrible UX

[dominictarr]

The rule of silence, as it's usually stated, is that "if a program has nothing surprising to say, is should say nothing at all"

Looking at this the reverse way, if something surprising HAS happened, then you must inform the user

A progress bar is nice, because it gives the user some idea about how long they will be waiting for, even log output can work in this way... even non-programmers learn to recognize patterns in the log output at boot, or the sound that the modem makes when it's about to successfully connect)

But the only thing that a steady spinner communicates is that the computer is still operating... And worse, it appears to be trying to communicate, but the movements mean nothing.

Really a spinner is the UX equivalent to when you are on hold, and you get hold music plus a message with "thank you for waiting, you are a valued customer".
An empty platitude, that instead of making you feel reassured, actually makes you feel more ignored.

A spinner that does not mean anything is worse than no output at all.

What would be acceptable:
If the spinner only moved when something actually happened (say, if it moved when ever the old log would have output a line) then, it's much more reassuring to the user - if it changes slowly - it must be waiting - if it changes fast, then the network is good right now...

[edef1c]

+1

[refack]

👎 I love it. Even submitted a PR to improve it. But it's incompatible with other packages that play with cursor position such as mocha:

[mantoni]

+1 for (at least) not showing the spinnter when running scripts, especially npm test and npm start

[xaka]

+1 as it makes Travis CI and Capistrano to generate huge logs. I'd either disabled it completely by default or change it back to previous version. Everything that changes cursor position (including \r) is bad for automation. As an option you could consider using infinite dots as an indicator of activity.

[mgol]

I submitted #5363 for not showing the spinner in npm scripts like npm test.

[nullivex]

+1 this is driving me nuts on Windows as well. Its not compatible with any of my terminals and the old format was just perfect.

[timoxley]

It'd be nice if the spinner could be toggled on off as the install is running (without losing previous log output) via hotkey.

[timoxley]

i.e. press the hotkey to take a peek at what's actually happening.

[nullivex]

It would be okay if it worked properly in windows but I dont see the point in the work required to make it cross OS compatible at least just disable it in windows by default?

[isaacs]

npm config set spin=false will disable it.

"The computer is operating" actually is relevant information. When the loglevel is set too low, people frequently think that npm is "hanging" when in fact, it's just fetching a lot of stuff. When it's set to include http, people complain about it being too noisy.

This is the reason why, as infuriating as it might be, "your call is important to us" is much better UX than silence. Silence would not tell you that you're still connected.

A more informative progress indicator would be better, no one is arguing that point. But that requires much more extensive work on the install process, which is planned, but will take a while.

[nullivex]

@isaacs Thanks for the config option at least it will make it tolerable on Windows.

You are correct on people thinking its hanging. Its just that this particular solution doesn't really work well for everyone at the moment so it is frustrating for those of us that don't have terminals capable of displaying the spinner correct and having it on by default.

[cyrusdavid]

👍 I'd prefer seeing the http messages than a spinner.

[nullivex]

Why not both? Or a percentage on the HTTP request?

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 4:20 PM, Cyrus David notifications@github.com
wrote:

[image: 👍] I'd prefer seeing the http messages than a spinner.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#5340 (comment).

eSited LLC
(701) 390-9638

[dominictarr]

@isaacs a really simple fix that would still be slightly meaningful would be to have the spinner tick when the the log would have output something. then you can look at it and distingiush between working and waiting. A progress bar is very difficult in this case, because does not know how much work it will be upfront.

The "thank you for waiting" is patronizing, hold music is enough to let you know you are still connected.
Maybe the CLI tool equivalent would be animated ascii art...