By Tim Kadlec CHAPTER 4Instagram^31 has taken a different approach to avoid that delay. As soon
as the person submits the comment, it appears on the page. The request
happens in the background. To the person submitting the comment, it
looks like it happens instantaneously. In reality, it takes as long to process
as any other form online — but the perception is dramatically improved.
Mike called this “performing actions optimistically,” but others have
called it asynchronous UI. The idea is the same: ditch the loading state and
let the user feel things are moving more quickly. If the task fails, then gen-
tly alert them somehow after the fact and let them easily resubmit.
Another great example is Polar^32 , the popular polling application. When
you create a poll, it shows up instantly in your feed. Again, there’s some
clever asynchronous UI at work. What actually happens when you create a
new poll is that Polar creates a temporary local copy of the poll and pushes
it to the top of your feed. The temporary copy is fully functional — you can
31 http://instagram.com/
32 http://www.polarb.com/
By creating a temporary local copy that is fully functional, users of
Polar get immediate feedback that their poll has been submitted and
avoid any performance delays that may happen in the background.