When the Web fails, what went wrong? Regular people can rarely figure it out.
You go to a Web site, perhaps for a large company or retailer. When you get to what you think you’re looking for, it just stalls and nothing seems to be happening. What went wrong?
The nature of the web and the internet makes that a very hard questions to answer.
Just off the top of my head, the answer could be any of the following:
- Your device has stop functioning.
- Your device is still working, but can’t respond to input from the user.
- Your browser stopped working.
- Your WiFi isn’t working.
- The WiFi is working, but you’re in a spot where it can’t deliver a consistent signal.
- The internet service wherever you are (possibly at home) isn’t working.
- You typed the name of the site wrong.
- You clicked on a link that doesn’t actually link to the site you’re seeking.
- The site is down.
- The site is working, but something within its internal workings isn’t functioning properly, like a database that’s not communicating with the Web interface.
- The site is working, but the page you were trying to see isn’t working.
- The site or page isn’t compatible with your browser.
- The site or page doesn’t render properly on your device.
- The site didn’t update its security certificate, so your browser says it’s unsafe.
- The site was hacked or is under attack, such as a DDOS attack.
- The site’s host, such as Amazon Web Services, is down.
- Some element embedded in the page but served from some other place, such as an ad, isn’t able to render properly.
- It actually is working, but you didn’t wait long enough.
That’s 18 different possible reasons, all of which generate the same result — a site that doesn’t seem to be responding. And it’s far from a complete list.
You may know to use tools to check some of these issues. Point your browser at fast.com to see if your connection is working and how fast it is. Go to downdetector.com or isitdownrightnow.com to see if the site is up. Do a web search to see if there are outages happening at your internet service or in the infrastructure that powers sites.
But for less sophisticated users, the lack of clues must be mystifying. Even sophisticated users waste a lot of time debugging these probems.
Why can’t the Web be like a car?
Just as with the Web, most drivers of cars couldn’t tell you how the car actually works. But we’ve gotten pretty good at basic diagnoses. For example:
- Car turns over slowly when starting, then gives up: probably a battery problem.
- Temperature gauge rising, smoke coming up from under the hood: Radiator.
- Car revs unevenly when you step on the gas: transmission.
- Loud noises from the back of the car: muffler.
- Dark smoke coming out back of car: engine or exhaust issue.
- Car very bouncy or squeaky: suspension.
- Uneven bumping sounds that speed up when the car goes faster: tires.
- Won’t stop or makes squealing noises when trying to stop: brakes.
But the clues the Web gives are too subtle to allow this sort of discrimination for the average user.
Is there any way we could make our devices, browsers, and sites give better clues about what’s not working?
I have no idea. But I’d love to hear from people who do.
I’m a software developer. In my experience (little as it is, I’m a young guy), developers are too busy with trying to get it working than communicating failures properly.
When you go to a web page, you are sending a request to a website which can involve 10 or 100 different steps, and each can go wrong for some reason or another. In a previous project, we were asked how many errors could there be, and we said: each line of code can result in an error. There’s not enough budget to cover those situations, so the solution was to ship the product and improve the handling of errors as they started happening and we got complaints.
Internally, each request generates a response which has some code for success or failure. 200 means success, 400 user failure, 500 server failure. In this case, 503 means the service is unavailable, which probably means the website is down. Maybe the browsers could read this and display the errors?
There’s also some things the user can do, such as trying to browse a different website (means the site is down, not their connection), refreshing the page, logging out and in.
Reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status
You asked three questions.
1. When the Web fails, what went wrong? Regular people can rarely figure it out.
2. Why can’t the Web be like a car?
3. Is there any way we could make our devices, browsers, and sites give better clues about what’s not working?
I’ve got one main question, and a few secondary questions, for you.
Why?
-Why would regular people want to know which World Wide web widget went wrong?
-Why would there be a benefit to regular people if the Web were like a car?
-Why would regular people be better off if given better clues about what’s not working?
When something goes wrong, regular people just want the problem to go away. That’s true regardless of whether the problem exists in their home plumbing, in the Web, in a car, in the electric grid, or with product ordering/delivery systems at Lowes. By definition, regular people don’t have the skills needed to fix the problem; they need specialists to fix their problems.
People in first world countries have been using cars for more than 100 years and have developed a fair amount of familiarity with them and the problems they can exhibit. But even in your car problem examples, if a regular person were able to make a basic diagnosis today they would still need a specialist to make a definitive diagnosis and to resolve the problem. For example, “Car turns over slowly when starting, then gives up: probably a battery problem.” may not be a battery problem at all. It may be a starter malfunction. Modern cars can generate diagnostic trouble codes which allow a person to identify and remedy malfunctions within the vehicle. They don’t help regular people, however; they’re intended to be used primarily by specialists.
But even most people in first world countries have been using the Web for less than 30 years. And since most of the Web is not co-located with its users, they are not as familiar with it as they are with cars. These regular people need specialists even more than do car users. As you’ve indicated, there are so many different types of problems and so many places they can originate that it’s difficult at times even for specialists to find and fix them. I maintain that more information wouldn’t help regular people. All they need to know is enough to get the appropriate specialists involved – or not. Last night, e.g., I wanted to order medications online but was informed “This site is down for regular maintenance. Please try again later.” That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need to know if that maintenance would involve updating operating system software or installing new communications devices. I knew that specialists were on the job and my problem would be fixed at some point.
In addition to not providing any real value to regular people, another reason I think there’s no real need for more detailed Web failure information is because situations like the ones you listed don’t happen that often. For a technology so complex and based on so many different hardware/software components produced and supported by so many different entities and located around the globe, I think the Web is amazingly robust and error-free.
I’m not saying that Web hardware/software should not continue to be improved. I am saying that a concerted effort to provide regular people with more information about Web failures wouldn’t be worth the effort. They really don’t need and can’t use that level of information. They need only enough information to know that something is amiss and that it’s time to call a specialist.
Tom
-Why would regular people want to know which World Wide web widget went wrong?
>> Because you can’t fix it unless you know where it failed.
-Why would there be a benefit to regular people if the Web were like a car?
>> Because if you could get better information about what went wrong and why, you could more likely fix it.
-Why would regular people be better off if given better clues about what’s not working?
>> Yes, because it would help them know what to fix.
More information delivered in ways that humans can understand is better. I don’t like black boxes that fail in mysterious ways. If you call your ISP when the problem is with the hosting of the site you are visiting, that’s wasteful.