Unlike the author, I do not think <toast> is a good idea. Elements are supposed to express semantics, but this just suggests behaviour. Not very descriptive behaviour either - since when does actual real-life toast smoothly rise and fall again? Possibly from the ceiling or coming in from the side?
Why not just call it <notification>?
Or even better, don’t add anything - it’s surely just a <div> that needs styling and animating with existing CSS and JS?
But it's called a toast because that's what many UX people have called it for years, because it pops up and toast pops up. It's a specific kind of notification, not any notification. (There's also "butter bar" and "modal dialog" and so on.)
And yes it's behavior, but <input> and <button> and <select> and <textarea> define plenty of behavior too.
I think the big concern here is standards and process... not its name or concept in themselves.
I've read the explainer but I still don't think I understand what this toast element is supposed to do. Also, am I correct in understanding that it is pretty much useless without javascript?
Call it what it is: a pop-up. You know, the thing we've spent years trying to block on the web because it's an anti-pattern that malicious actors abuse to steal clicks and make interaction harder.
A "toast" means a few words of salutation. That's the purpose of the Toast UI element. A user requests an action, the action returns a successful response, the user receives a message consisting of a few words announcing the success.
Just because you are oblivious to the concept it doesn't mean it's bad. It just means you need to learn something before blindly asserting that stuff you don't know and are not familiar with is for some reason comparable to dog shit.
The point is, "because android does it" is terrible reasoning for naming the thing.
It's exactly the point the author here was trying to make. Google does not control the web or define HTML standards in a vacuum, nor is it the focal point of the internet.
> The point is, "because android does it" is terrible reasoning for naming the thing.
That was not the point at all. The point is that the concept of a toast exists and is already widely established. Android is one of those platforms. That's it. I fail to see the point of bitching about Android as if that would undo the dissemination of this particular UI pattern. I mean, Microsoft adopted the concept. Do you expect to undo that by bitching about Windows 10?
The connotations of "toast" as salutation are even worse here; hardly anything is similar between giving a toast and a transient message (that's in practice usually about failure, not success) showing up at the bottom of the screen.
Out of all the reasons why they could've named it "Toast", the most reasonable one to me would be "because it's another kind of a pop-up notification, and the phrase 'pop-up notification' is already taken".
> The connotations of "toast" as salutation are even worse here;
I don't understand your problem with the concept. It's pretty clear what it means and how it operates, and the UI concept has been extensively disseminated and adopted, not only in web-base UI and UX but also in GUI toolkits for mobile (android) and desktop (Windows 10).
Exactly where are you having problems understanding the concept?
>Exactly where are you having problems understanding the concept?
The concept is fine, I’m sure everyone understands that. The conflict is your assertion that it comes from the meaning related to “a small speech given while raising one’s glass.” It comes from the “bread that has been lightly re-cooked” meaning. Toast notifications would slide up from the bottom of the screen, then sink back down – moving like a piece of bread in a top-loading toaster. (The most common kind, at least in America, at least at the time.) This leads to bad semantics, on the web.
Unlike modern toasters which rudely attempt to catapult your toast into orbit, the Sunbeam gracefully and almost silently presents your toast with the love and care it deserves.
OK, getting off topic, but: we had this toaster when I was a kid, and I hated everything about it. This is the worst toaster I ever used.
Getting it to engage was super finicky. I never saw anybody get it to work on the first try. You often had to whack it down pretty hard to make it work, while other times a light touch was sufficient. You could tell when someone was using it from across the house because you heard a metallic "whang, whang, whang, whang!", at various volumes, as they tried to get it to trigger.
Going up was super slow. (In his video, he shows it at "6x" or "12x" speed so viewers don't fall asleep.) Who would ever want that? It's done toasting. Don't make me wait 10 seconds to get my toast. Lots of singed fingers from impatient people reaching in to get their food.
The sensor wasn't very good, either. There was a razor thin margin where you'd get reasonable toast, and it was almost all the way to the "light" end. At even 25% to "dark", you'd get a block of charcoal. I'd set it all the way at "light", and toast my bread twice, if needed, because that was safest.
Lack of a manual up/down lever makes everything worse. It means you need to use the special "ONE SLICE" slot when you only have one slice. It also means if you see your bread start to catch fire (yeah), there's no easy way to get it out in a hurry. You could push the lightness all the way to "light" and hold it there (I think that was the official way), but that was unreliable. Usually, we'd just unplug it.
Also, as he notes in the video, the bread guides don't move so about all you can fit in here is a small generic white slice, and the outside gets as hot as the inside so be careful not to touch it.
This is the 2013 Mac Pro of toasters: very pretty, very clever, and a thermal nightmare. If I had infinite money and space, I'd buy one to show off, and never use it.
> You could tell when someone was using it from across the house because you heard a metallic "whang, whang, whang, whang!", at various volumes, as they tried to get it to trigger.
Lolol....reminds me of our first family toaster from the 70's.
But my dreams of owning one of these are now shattered :)
More importantly, the slider on it doesn't control time but rather doneness. It gages the reflectivity of the surface to determine how brown the item has become, meaning my frozen Eggo and my refrigerated sliced bread both come out how I want them without having to play with the dial each time.
But my, does it feel more fragile than my old Chinesium toaster!
what?? I thought he was just snarkily referring to some proposal/tag that he didn't want to actually name, likely <portal>. <toast> is a dreadful name.
Doesn't anyone there remember when <bold> and <italic> got deprecated in favor of <strong> and <em>??
Why not just call it <notification>?
Or even better, don’t add anything - it’s surely just a <div> that needs styling and animating with existing CSS and JS?