The fragmentation of the page status introduced by multiple design patterns – best practice for page loading?
In one of the recent updates to Google Chrome, we have seen yet another method of dealing with page loading status with the introduction of the loading animation in the favicon area of the browser tab (by the way, the Firefox browser uses the side to side indeterminate loading state animation made notorious by LinkedIn).
As far as I can tell, this makes at least five or six different ways that you can indicate a loading status on a page, many of which occur simultaneously and makes the current state of the page content rather confusing for users.
So the ones that I have seen include:
- Browser tab favicon area loading indicator seen in image above (is there a name for this?)
Page header loading progress indicator - example here
Bottom of the page loading indicator (e.g. when infinite scrolling is implemented) - example here
Assuming that there is a 'best practice' when it comes to dealing with page content status, is there a reason why there needs to be so many different ways of indicating to the user that the status of the page is not completed loaded? Doesn't this provide a very inconsistent user experience and add to the user frustration?