[pubcookie-dev] Improved user experience on login delays

[Rici Lake]

One of our backend applications can take a bit of time (5-15 seconds) 
to respond to a user who has just logged in. This became a problem when 
we set up relaying, because the PubCookie.relay page presents a 
completely blank screen, which confuses our users.

I think it's purely psychological; we believe that if the user were 
presented with a message ("Please wait"), they wouldn't panic. However, 
there is no way to template the relay page.

I propose the following small patch. Can anyone think of a reason why 
it is a bad idea?

diff -urN pubcookie-3.3.2b/src/index.cgi.c 
pubcookie-3.3.2b.patched/src/index.cgi.c
--- pubcookie-3.3.2b/src/index.cgi.c    Fri Nov  3 13:59:06 2006
+++ pubcookie-3.3.2b.patched/src/index.cgi.c    Wed Nov 29 10:32:42 2006
@@ -2899,6 +2899,9 @@
          print_html (p,
                      "<p align=center><input type=submit name=go 
value=\"Continue\">");
          print_html (p, "</noscript>\n");
+        ntmpl_print_html (p, TMPL_FNAME,
+                          libpbc_config_getstring (p, 
"tmpl_relay_redirect", "relay_redirect"),
+                          NULL);
          print_html (p, "</form></html>\n");


diff -urN pubcookie-3.3.2b/src/login_templates.generic/relay_redirect 
pubcookie-3.3.2b.patched/src/login_templates.generic/relay_redirect
--- pubcookie-3.3.2b/src/login_templates.generic/relay_redirect Wed Dec 
31 19:00:00 1969
+++ pubcookie-3.3.2b.patched/src/login_templates.generic/relay_redirect 
Wed Nov 29 10:40:08 2006
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+<-- Message to display while waiting for relay -->