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Eclipse-Dominator / pe

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Application would not run when there are no internet connection as well as unable to view module information offline #5

Open Eclipse-Dominator opened 1 year ago

Eclipse-Dominator commented 1 year ago

I know this application uses the NUS API to retrieve the mods required and is necessary for them to obtain the list of module code. However, as a student I might not have access to a good internet connection or sometimes I just wanted to view the modules offline. In those instances, NUS mod website actually caches the data offline so I can still view my chosen modules even though I have no access to the internet connection. However, when trying to open your application offline, it will just hang and attempt to connect to an internet connection without giving me any errors or prompt.

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Users who does not know this can be unsure of whats going on since the issue was due to a lack of response from the online API

nus-pe-script commented 1 year ago

Team's Response

We already mentioned that users are to connect the internet: "CLIMods requires internet access because we fetch module data from NUSModsAPI. Please ensure that you have internet access before launching CLIMods."

Read here:

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The reason why you can see your modules offline is potentially because of your browser's HTTP default cache mechanism.

Items for the Tester to Verify

:question: Issue response

Team chose [response.Rejected]

Reason for disagreement: Okay the original issue I had here was because after I disconnect my internet and try to open the application, it takes forever to load in so I assumed that the app cannot start when there is no internet connection. After the PE, I realised the application does load, it is just that the timeout timer is set to a very, very long time when downloading the requests. This is also why I assumed the application cannot run when there is no internet connection. After the time out, the app runs with all my previously selected modules but without the online mods which is my original expected behavior.

This does not mean that user would not attempt to open the application in offline mode. I think the main issue here is the really really long load time. I was actually confused by this and thought the app wouldn't run at all as there is no prompt (no hint in the cmd and no form of GUI prompt). I think this is still a feature flaw as it is completely reasonable for users to open the application offline or open the application with a slow internet connection. They could have experienced something similar to me which resulted in thinking the app has hanged or stopped functioning.

This can be solved in many ways. One way is to have some form of prompt to inform the user that the app is currently trying to load in the data or perform the loading in a separate thread to prevent the user from experiencing a long time of "hanging" application.

I think as a regular user, it would not surprise me if they try to open the application with a slow internet connection or no internet connection. Thus, this should be handled visually in the application as from the end user perspective, I would not know if the application was hanging or actually downloading the data in the background.