From the department from incredibly small nitpicks that have bitten me firmly in the buttocks:

When the "You have an important ticket open" banner is displayed on the Linode Manager front page, it bumps the list of active nodes down just enough that the first and second nodes on the list rest in exactly the same location as the reboot button on the individual node management page.

I have muscle tremors and a fast connection. The reboot button has no confirmation pop-up. I rebooted my node on accident while several people were using it :(

From now on I'll be using the "Dashboard" links in the Linode manager instead of clicking on the node name itself, but I just wanted to point out that there's probably a UI design anti-pattern here if this could happen in the first place.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I always get prompted (via a Javascript alert dialog) when using the Reboot button (and did just now when I did a quick check). Could your local browser configuration or an add-on be somehow hiding or auto-answering that popup? Or perhaps your reflexes included hitting the Enter key to acknowledge the pop-up? I think the default is "OK".

-- David

+1

_________________
/ Peter

I am absolutely, 100% sure I did not receive a pop-up or any form of confirmation. The only config I have that could be a factor is I block Javascript. I suppose that could do it, but I'd think that would cause the reboot button to fail rather than just assume an affirmative answer to the popup?

Maybe you shouldn't block JavaScript and then complain about JavaScript features not working?



So you'd rather be completely unable to reboot your Linode at all, rather than have it reboot without a confirmation because you've disabled a standard feature in your browser?

I'm only half trolling -- Would disabling the reboot button when a JavaScript alert isn't available be better? Wouldn't that be more disruptive to people that can click buttons they mean to click on?

Yep, that would do it. I'd have to check to be sure, but I suspect the Javascript is intercepting the button press (or the form submission event) to provide the confirmation dialog. If you disable Javascript, the interception never occurs so the default HTML form behavior takes over, and the button just submits the request immediately.

I suppose it could be architected so a submission if Javascript was disabled took you to a totally separate page to confirm the request with another button, but that's more work (in terms of structuring things so the server can detect both types of submissions) in support of what is a reasonably uncommon scenario of having Javascript disabled. You could just always have another full confirmation page and cover both cases that way, but that's not quite as fluid.

Given the tech audience of Linode, I suppose it wouldn't completely surprise me if the percentage of users with disabled (or more limited) Javascript may not be higher than usual, so suggesting that case be considered by Linode isn't necessarily that crazy. Or at least a warning on such pages if they detect Javascript is disabled.

In terms of an immediate practical implication to your original question, and assuming no changes on Linode's side, whitelisting Linode (or at least the dashboard page) to permit Javascript should at least protect you against the unexpected reboot scenario.

-- David

If javascript is disabled, the link/button should redirect to a page that shows the confirmation.

If javascript is enabled, it should show the warning, and do as it does now.

Putting a warning within NOSCRIPT tags to alert users with Javascript disabled that clicking the button initiates an immediate reboot without confirmation should suffice.

The message won't appear with Javascript enabled.

No, it really shouldn't do that. The modern web requires Javascript, and web developers should not have to go out of their way wasting time on alternate implementations (like confirmation *pages* to replace dialogs) of things that normally use javascript. If you disable core web functionality, it's at your own risk.

And at least Linode's developers were careful enough to ensure that the interface degrades gracefully. No JavaScript available to confirm? We'll assume that the user did intend to do what they clicked and proceed anyway.

Sounds like you would rather the 'Shutdown' button behave like the terminate button, but without confirmation.

The interface doesn't "degrade". The Javascript code that shows the alert box simply doesn't run. Linode didn't do anything extra to make it that way, that's just the way it works, Linode or not.

That's how you create a button that degrades properly; JavaScript can be used to enhance an experience as Linode has done, or it can create the UI or it's functionality from scratch, in which case it doesn't degrade gracefully when someone has a browser with limited functionality.

To create a button that doesn't degrade, you don't assign any action to it in the HTML, and only cause the action to happen via JavaScript (or you go full AJAX and create the button itself using JavaScript, in which case the no-JavaScript experience is that the controls are completely missing)