Another even easier and quicker way to greatly improve UX in many products is better copywriting (possibly by hiring an actual copywriter).
Quite frankly, I know I'd be quite puzzled if a message popped up out of nowhere telling me "You might be logged out, please, back up your content and refresh the page!".
What do you mean by I /might/ be logged out? Am I logged out or not? And why would I be logged out? What does this have to do with anything anyway?
And what on earth am I supposed to do to "back up my content"? What does this even mean?
And what is this "refreshing the page" business all about?
To be honest, being a developer myself, I would actually figure out what you actually mean. But I can guarantee you that 99.9% of the people out there won't have the faintest clue of what you're talking about. They'll just do what they always do in this case: they'll click OK, or Cancel, or whatever they think is going to make the annoying message go away.
> what is this "refreshing the page" business all about?
Look at a calender and note the year. Now realize that NSCA Mosaic was released in 1993. Eternal September was in 1993 as well. That is almost 20 years ago. Do you really think that 'refreshing the page' is beyond 99% of peoples knowledge?
That error message does need cleaning up but your target audience are most likely not fetuses, so don't treat them like they wouldn't be able to put their pants on in the morning if you didn't tell them how to in excruciating detail, despite doing it every day, when they visit your site.
Oh excuse me, a 'website' or a 'site' is a virtual location accessed through a 'web browser'. A 'web browser' is a program that is used to access 'web sites' over an interconnected series of networks called 'the Internet'. I know you said you're a developer and may be able to figure this out for yourself but as you said 99.9% of people wouldn't, I wasn't going to take that chance. Was it too advanced for you?
Also depending on the issue 'might be logged out' may be completely correct. Obviously something has occurred that is making part of the webapp believe something has gone wrong, but it probably still has "Welcome [username]" or "Logged In" at the top of the page. Reloading the page is really the only way to verify something really bad is going to happen.
Quite frankly, I know I'd be quite puzzled if a message popped up out of nowhere telling me "You might be logged out, please, back up your content and refresh the page!".
What do you mean by I /might/ be logged out? Am I logged out or not? And why would I be logged out? What does this have to do with anything anyway?
And what on earth am I supposed to do to "back up my content"? What does this even mean?
And what is this "refreshing the page" business all about?
To be honest, being a developer myself, I would actually figure out what you actually mean. But I can guarantee you that 99.9% of the people out there won't have the faintest clue of what you're talking about. They'll just do what they always do in this case: they'll click OK, or Cancel, or whatever they think is going to make the annoying message go away.