Wp-calypso: SignUp: Resuming a flow with progress jumps between first step and progressed step

[spen]

Steps to reproduce

1. Starting at URL: http://calypso.localhost:3000/start
2. Progress through the flow a few steps, in my example I progress to /plans/
3. Open a new tab and enter http://calypso.localhost:3000/start
4. You should first see the /site-type/ step (First step in thee flow, currently), then after a short time, you'll jump to /plans/

What I expected

I should be taken to the same place as I left off... Though there has been talk of ditching this resuming functionality completely.

What happened instead

We land at http://calypso.localhost:3000/start.
Then our controller navigates to the first step in the flow, taking us to http://calypso.localhost:3000/start/site-type.
Then after a few moments our controller figures out where we left off and navigates to that step, in the example case: http://calypso.localhost:3000/start/plans

In my opinion, this is quite jarring... The customer may start trying to interact with the first step and be taken aback by the unexpected jump to another step.
We should be resolving/reconciling the target step in one go, rather than in different, disconnected places.
Or, get rid of the saved progress functionality altogether, until we can address it properly and make it a positive experience, rather than a negative one.

Screenshot / Video

Here, Calypso is just starting to load after I went directly to /start/

Then, before content renders, we're navigated to the first step - start/site-type

As that step renders in, we see the URL update once more to start/plans

Finally the plans step renders

[adamziel]

I moved it closer to the bottom of Up next - while it's not perfect, it doesn't seem like a top priority either.

CC @p-jackson: it seems related to your work on resumeProgress

[p-jackson]

Yep, this was fixed by #34949.

Tested and the behaviour is what I expected: the second tab won't jump forward at all, it proceeds forward one step. It will have the dependencies pre-filled, so it remembers the site title/style/subject from the first tab. I think this is fine.

[p-jackson]

fyi @spen @adamziel