Chapter 5 : Smoke and Mirrors: Perceived Responsiveness
The previous chapter covered the topic of code performance and efficiency, including many suggestions to help improve your end users’ experience with your RIAs. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to reduce the amount of time required for certain actions. Ajax requests, for example, are limited by the quality of the network connection between the browser and server.
As web developers, we need to figure out how to keep our end users informed that things are occurring behind the scenes, and give them the impression that they are receiving a fast, responsive web browsing experience, despite these holdups. This chapter covers this issue of perceived responsiveness, rather than actual performance—the art of illusion and “smoke and mirrors” to provide the impression of a fast and responsive web application in those times when the browser and server just can’t produce actual results quickly enough.