Looking out for No. 1

After months of development and testing, this pilot fish and his co-worker roll out their Web-based application to users.

"As expected, we ran into a couple minor bugs, which we easily fixed," says fish. "However, we also came up against an elusive performance issue that was loading the server so heavily, it was making the system almost unusable.

"We dug through our code and server log to try to locate the problem but couldn't really find anything, nor could we reproduce the error. The only lead we had was that the Web server would sometimes report duplicate requests from a specific host -- that is, two or more simultaneous requests for the same page."

Fish figures that's just the case of users getting impatient and clicking the link a second time. But a few weeks after the launch, frustrated by the problems, he decides to track back those duplicate requests in hopes of finding something.

He copies the list of all PCs showing double requests, then sorts them by IP address. Then he starts matching addresses to individual users, starting with the most frequent offenders -- starting with the No. 1 culprit, who also turns out to be No. 15 on the list.

"Apparently he would plug his laptop into the network when he sat at his desk, but most of the time, he showed up using his wireless card," fish says. "His total was over 600 doubles, twice the No. 2 culprit's total.

"I had a list of about 20 names written down before I realized that none of my power users were on the list. Looking at the names more carefully, I quickly realized I had the exact opposite -- this was a list of the least computer-savvy users.

"In a flash it came to me. I launched the application and instead of clicking on one of the links, I double-clicked the link. A quick glance at the log showed that I had just made a double request.

"My co-worker and I would have never come across it on our own, nor would have any of our power users -- we all know when to use a single click and when to double-click. However, a lot of our less-savvy users were simply double-clicking on everything."

The fix is simple: Instead of trying to educate each user, fish and his co-worker write a little JavaScript that senses a double-click and blocks the second click, and then displays a pop-up message:

A Double-click Haiku

Rest your mouse finger

Links require but one click

So double-click not.

"The double-clickers got the message and chuckled -- and weren't offended, thank goodness," says fish. "The load on the server dropped, and everyone was happy.

"And culprit No. 1? I told him about his status, and a few weeks later I saw him again. He told me that now he double-clicks on the link every time, just so he'll get the haiku.

"He said, 'It's the first time I've ever been No. 1 in anything!'"

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