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    Building a Toast Component

    (emilkowal.ski)
    117 points FragrantRiver | 12 comments | 03 Dec 25 14:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.519s | source | bottom
    1. jmercouris ◴[07 Dec 25 16:21 UTC] No.46182835[source]▶
    Toasts are a great way to lose information. They are a terrible design and should not be used. They distract the user, are not dense with information, and provide no value. If a message is important enough for the user to read, it should be a dialog box.
    replies(3): >>46183186 #>>46183450 #>>46183529 #
    2. oulipo2 ◴[07 Dec 25 17:07 UTC] No.46183186[source]▶
    Most of the time they're used for a quick visual confirmation that "your operation went right"
    replies(2): >>46183234 #>>46184244 #
    3. jmercouris ◴[07 Dec 25 17:12 UTC] No.46183234[source]▶
    The information that the user did something "right" should be responsive next to where the user initiated the action- not in a random corner.
    replies(1): >>46183601 #
    4. ahallock ◴[07 Dec 25 17:38 UTC] No.46183450[source]▶
    Developers reach for Toasts because they're zero effort. Good user experience takes a lot of thought and you can skip all that with Toasts haha.
    replies(2): >>46185316 #>>46191419 #
    5. jopicornell ◴[07 Dec 25 17:49 UTC] No.46183529[source]▶
    Dialogs are a great way to lose information. They are often dismissed by users that want to do their job and are interrupted by modals. Users focused on their tasks blindly dismiss dialogs.

    Read the above as a critique to your strong opinion and not an opinion of mine.

    My opinion is that toasts are great for notifications that can be reviewed/checked later, like chat notifications or finished background tasks.

    What should be avoided, just for the same reason as modals/dialogs, is an overuse, causing fatigue.

    replies(1): >>46185195 #
    6. nine_k ◴[07 Dec 25 17:58 UTC] No.46183601{3}[source]▶
    That control may not be visible by the time the operation completes.
    replies(2): >>46184703 #>>46187073 #
    7. tyre ◴[07 Dec 25 19:19 UTC] No.46184244[source]▶
    That’s why confetti exists
    8. thunderfork ◴[07 Dec 25 20:12 UTC] No.46184703{4}[source]▶
    There are certainly times where this must be the case, but I think it's broadly better to have designs avoid this.
    9. mhitza ◴[07 Dec 25 21:12 UTC] No.46185195[source]▶
    Dialogs don't have to be modal, and in the parent comments context they aren't.
    10. robin_reala ◴[07 Dec 25 21:26 UTC] No.46185316[source]▶
    Zero effort, and they animate. Components that have animation baked in are drug-like in how they hook in designers and devs who are only thinking about the visual presentation.
    11. strogonoff ◴[08 Dec 25 00:51 UTC] No.46187073{4}[source]▶
    Toasts are popular, but not the only option if you want to notify the user about completion of a longer-running action when the user may have already switched away from where they started it. Consider a status bar[0] instead. You can make it cute and animated, too!

    [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A....

    12. wildrhythms ◴[08 Dec 25 12:20 UTC] No.46191419[source]▶
    Zero effort, and it's basically a crude visualization of a good old message bus :P