A note to the web designers of the world

[xela]

Dear web designers:

People have other things to do than look at your page all day. Just because you think your form can be filled-in in five minutes flat doesn't mean I'm going to. I may take a phone call in the middle of it. Or take a minute to create a new email address to give you. Or bury your page among the other hundred or so tabs I may have open at any given moment. It may take me a half-hour to finally hit the submit button on your five-minute form. It may take me a month. The only thing you achieve by putting timeouts on forms it piss customers off.

Comments

[nakor.livejournal.com]

Most likely, they have timeouts because there are server-side resources tied up waiting for each of those forms. There's little good reason for such---but lots of bad programers do it anyway, and some incredible programmers do. Take a look at the PLT Scheme Web Server for one example.