Stop reloading dapps on network change

[sulliwane]

Expected behavior: Chain change in MM UI should not trigger a whole refresh of the browser page.

I experience this in Chrome AND firefox, with my react application.

Any input on this ?

Many thanks

[2-am-zzz]

This is expected behavior since users who switch chains should have an updated UI on the current status of that chain. Since many applications rely on being on a specific network to function, this is a way for us to avoid users getting confused with interacting with a dapp that has residual data from another network.

[sulliwane]

Thank you @Zanibas for your answer.

I truly belive this should be the responsability of the application developper to listen for chain change, and react accordingly.

Let's be honest, forcing a page reload is a disastrous user experience...I really hope there would be a way to avoid this page reload, and let the application developper responsibly react to chainID change...

In my case, I detect the chain change by checking the chainID every 100ms...

What do you think?

Many thanks!

[sulliwane]

Any input on this question? Thanks!

[danfinlay]

@sulliwane The team actually discussed this a bit, and we ultimately agree with you. Force reloading was a band-aid for a period where developers were just learning to make Dapps, and were almost never using good practices. It is probably time to grow up, and remove these training wheels. Changing the title of this issue to reflect the desired action.

[sulliwane]

Many thanks @danfinlay @lazaridiscom for your feedbacks.

I'm surprised no other frontend guys did raise this question before...

It feels like a terrible user experience to get full reload on each chain change :-(

Our Dapp is made from the ground up to support multiple chain ids.

[olaf89]

Are there any cases where non-developer would switch between networks on single application? Full reload would be a terrible experience given users would need to use that. As for developers goes, i think refreshing actually saves time compared to debugging app.

[danfinlay]

Are there any cases where non-developer would switch between networks on single application?

Yes, more and more apps are recommending custom networks to their users, and as Plasma chains become more common, this will too. MetaMask needs to more seamlessly support this kind of behavior in the future, but in the meanwhile, user interaction is required for those sites.