Feature request from erikhansen, posted on GitHub Jan 07, 2016
This issue covers what I consider to be two major usability issues with messages:
1. Error message hides after 5 seconds
When error messages are displayed on the frontend, they disappear after 5 seconds (this is controlled by the onHiddenChange method in app/code/Magento/Ui/view/frontend/web/js/view/messages.js). If a user is not paying attention, if they are a slow reader, or if the error message is long, they message may disappear before they read the entire message. My recommendation would be to NOT hide the message but to leave it on the page until the user takes some other action that causes the message to be hidden.
Here is an example of an error message that will hide after 5 seconds:
@mttjohnson did some digging into what happens when there is an error with a payment method in the checkout process. It looks like the payment methods use the Magento_Ui/js/modal/alert component to display an alert-style modal that doesn't go away until the user closes it. The red error message I displayed above occurs when there is an exception thrown by Magento when progressing from Shipping > Billing, so it may not warrant an alert style popup, but it should at least persist on the page and not hide. This is what the alert-style popup looks like:
2. Error messages may display outside of current viewport
If a user is a on a small screen device, there are many situations where they will never see an error message. For example, if they're on the "Shipping" step of the checkout process and an error message is added, they may not see the error message get added to the top of the page. My suggestion would be to either smooth scroll the user up to the error message, display the error message next to the button they used to submit, or come up with a notification system that display notifications on top of all content.
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