Retrying doesn’t help on a slow connection... if the best case connections speed of your user is slower than your timeout, you can retry infinite times and it wont help.
Maybe increase the timeout on retry?
Exponential backoff but for the timeout instead of the interval, and/or a Wait Longer button, sound useful.
Re:Don't trust default timeouts
by iainmerrick on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:51PM
(#24318505)
As a user, I hate it when a program tells me I need to press “retry”! You’re the computer, you retry, and keep trying until I ask you to stop.
Until it sits there and retires till hell freezes over and you don't realize anything is wrong.
And that's the problem with timeouts, everyone has different expectations.
Re:Don't trust default timeouts
by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday August 29, 2020 @05:47PM
(#24319646)
It's hard to go wrong by telling people what's happening and why. "it's taking longer than usual to X" is a fine thing to expose in a UI.
Re:Don't trust default timeouts
by iainmerrick on Saturday August 29, 2020 @06:01PM
(#24319731)
I should have stated my implicit assumption, that the program will tell me that it’s retrying. If I decide it’s not worthwhile I can stop it, sure.
For any user-initiated action, automatic retry seems strictly better than failing on a single timeout.
You need the retry button anyway, in case the server is throwing errors. And there's often no good place for a cancel button, without putting up a big 'Loading' animation.