Designing Web Interfaces

Chapter 8. Process Flow

In the last three chapters we’ve been discussing the principle Stay on the Page. Sometimes tasks are unfamiliar or complicated and require leading the user step-by-step through a Process Flow. It has long been common practice on the Web to turn each step into a separate page. While this may be the simplest way break down the problem, it may not lead to the best solution. For some Process Flows it makes sense to keep the user on the same page throughout the process.

Google Blogger

The popular site Google Blogger generally makes it easy to create and publish blogs. One thing it does not make easy, though, is deleting comments that others may leave on your blog. This is especially difficult when you are the victim of hundreds of spam comments left by nefarious companies hoping to increase their search ranking.

Blogger forces you to delete these comments through a three-step process. Each step is an individual page, all punctuated with a page refresh (Figure 8-1).

Figure 8-1. Google Blogger forces you through a three-step process for each comment you delete, which is especially tiresome if you have dozens of spam comments to delete

My (Bill’s) blog site was recently spammed. It turns out that my 100 or so articles all had 4 or more spam comments. That means that I had to delete more than 400 spam comments. Given the way Google Blogger implemented comment deleting, I ...