3.3. Simple Bells and Whistles

With this tiny bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, we have essentially turned an entire website into a single-page application. However, it still leaves quite a bit to be desired. Let’s slick things up a bit.

3.3.1. Progress Indicator

Since we are not allowing the browser to navigate from page to page, the user will not see any indication of progress while data is loading. We need to provide some feedback to users to let them know that something is, in fact, happening (Figure 3-1). Without this feedback, users may wonder if they actually clicked the link or missed it, and will often start clicking all over the place in frustration. This can lead to increased server load and application instability (i.e., crashing).