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polkadot-js
Do not auto-dismiss extrinsic confirmations
The UX for interacting with PJS could be vastly improved by not auto-dismissing the extrinsic confirmations/errors. I've found myself rushing to the explorer to see which block included my message, as well as missing the confirmation or error because I temporarily moved away. I think ideally, the messages would just stay with a small x to dismiss them, and if possible would include a link to the block that included it.
In my opinion, removing auto-dismissing toasts wouldn’t be ideal, as it could lead to a large stack of toasts on submitting multiple transactions. Users would then need to manually dismiss each toast from the UI. Currently, toasts are dismissed automatically after 7.5 seconds, which is a reasonable timeout.
If a user misses any transaction, they can easily view it on Subscan and access more details using the block number or extrinsic hash.
I logged this after missing too many of these notifications. In our particular use case, the block time is 60 seconds, which means it's hard to just sit there. I mentioned this to a dev of another (6 second block chain), and they agreed that they had missed notifications as well.
As to the UX tradeoff, it seems losing information here is worse than a potential annoyance of stacking toasts. But a middle ground might be to auto-dismiss any lingering toasts if you submit another transaction.
Regarding the block number or extrinsic hash... where are those? The messages, even when I see them, often dismiss before I have been able to get information like that out of them. I often have to go digging through the explorer tab to try to find the right block that it was included in.
I agree with @blakebyrnes, It would be useful to move auto-dismissed notifications to a side panel so they are still accessible. Not every chain has a subscan deployment, most especially new chains. It's good to make polkadotjs as friendly and robust as possible since it's the most accessible explorer for devs.
Having a side panel would be optimal, I believe, as it will improve the UX. However, removing the auto-dismissable nature of toasts is not ideal. We can add them to the side panel.