Binderhub: Make it more clear that a binder is building/loading

[choldgraf]

@sylvaincorlay mentioned that several of their xtensor users have been confused after clicking Binder badges. They get redirected to a new page, and because nothing changes super-quickly they just close the page and move on.

This issue is for discussing ways to make it more clear to users that "your binder is building" during this time.

A few suggestions that popped up:

• Add more steps to the progress bar during build. This would only really make sense for the "build" phase of repos, which mostly just pertains to the repo author.
• Add a separate "launch" page that'd have its own progress bar / UI
• Restart the progress bar during the launch stage and add in some "fake" progress steps while we wait for the server to launch.

I believe @minrk had some ideas on this too!

[minrk]

It would be cool (not sure how feasible) to make the build progress count and track the docker statements, so build could get X/Y updates as it moves along.

[astrofrog]

I have the same issue. One idea I had would be to make it so the URL includes an extra optional argument e.g. simpleprogress=1 which, if set, would show a simplified progress bar for users. To be honest, even something simple like a spinning wheel would be good, it doesn't have to be fancy and actually track underlying progress.

[choldgraf]

I think something like that sounds good - or even do the opposite behavior, have a keyword like "buildcontrol=True" to force it to show the build UI, and have a binder link default to the "simple progress" page

[betatim]

I think we can address this by showing a different page (with a spinner) to people who visit mybinder.org/v2/gh/blah/foo/master directly. So they don't see the form at all and if you visit mybinder.org/ we show you the form and detailed logs. IMHO this would also fit with #196

[choldgraf]

for sure - that's what I meant by

and have a binder link default to the "simple progress" page

so +1 from me :-)

[choldgraf]

What do folks think for something like this for the page you'd hit after clicking on a binder link (it'd be much smoother in the actual browser, choppiness is because of the gif capture):

[choldgraf]

@betatim you mentioned a spinner before, is this what you imagined?

I think we could combine this w/ some kind of cycling through clever phrases (e.g. "reticulating splines")

[astrofrog]

This looks great!

[choldgraf]

If folks in general are happy w/ that page, I can make a PR to have ParameterizedMainHandler point there instead of the build page and we can iterate on specifics there. LMK

[betatim]

Just found this tab again. Must have been to mesmerised by the spinner (which is awesome) to actually post a reply. LGTM!!

[choldgraf]

Note that I've got #384 mostly ready to go to implement a loading page! Will iterate on discussion there @betatim :-)

[choldgraf]

this is now fixed with #384 , ping @SylvainCorlay :-)

[SylvainCorlay]

Awesome!

[astrofrog]

Thanks! 👍