Give timed out notice before posting IDs/comments

Platform(s): Website (on Chrome)

Description of need:
I open observation tabs to save them for later, often writing detailed comments. After a few days, the tab times out. Posting a comment or ID on a tab that has timed out triggers this notice:


This is a huge annoyance if a large body of text was just written and subsequently deleted. If I had known to reload the page before typing, everything would have been fine.

Feature request details:
Give some indication that a tab has timed out before trying to post an ID or comment. I’m not sure how this works with different browsers, but some options I can think of include a banner indicating the page has timed out or an inability to type in the ID/comment box.

I’m guessing the page doesn’t realize it has timed out until an attempted post is made, so I don’t know how easy this would be to implement. But I feel like I have seen similar banners on other websites.

I also know there are obvious workarounds (e.g., not using open tabs to remember things, reloading every open tab before typing), but this happens often enough to me that I’d like a system change if possible.

11 posts were merged into an existing topic: Error when submitting id or comment on tab left often from previous session

merged to existing bug report https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/error-when-submitting-id-or-comment-on-tab-left-often-from-previous-session/3753