From: Leon Brocard Date: 15:41 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Progress bars There is so much I hate about progress bars that I don't quite know where to begin. First off, let's make the assumption that progress bars (or some sort of progress display) might be useful. If something is going to take a while, it might be useful to inform the user. Even better, you could inform the user the expected time the whole process will take. Or the expected time to the end, and where in the process you are. It just makes sense. Programs like rsync which lack such progress indicators should be shot[1]. A progress bar should have a bar. The bar should start at the left, increase during the process, and get to the right. When it's got to the right, the operation is complete. Some sort of ETA might be nice. If this is an installer, the installer should quit. If there are things to do after the progress bar, the programmer is stupid and they should be included into the progress bar. And about ETAs: let's not be too accurate, because you know some foolish programmer will have an ETA that jumps from 2:01 to 2:13 and back again as it is overly accurate. This is silly. Mac OS X has vague ETAs, like "Under five minutes", "Under a minute". This is nice and friendly. I was installing a driver and utility disk for a digital camera the other day. The primary installer really installed lots of little installers which installed other things, most of which had a couple of progress bars. Multiple progress bars are stupid. Roll them into one. This installation process showed me 28 progress bars. 28! All I wanted to know was if it was almost over and how long it would take, not the details of every file of every package it was trying to install. Bad programmer, no cookie! Leon [1] So rsync has a progress bar for a file. So what? I'm transferring 200k small files, and it fails to do anything useful for that
From: Jody Belka Date: 15:58 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Progress bars On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Leon Brocard wrote: > A progress bar should have a bar. The bar should start at the left, > increase during the process, and get to the right. When it's got to > the right, the operation is complete. Most definitely. People who code "progress" bars that jump back to the start when they reach the end and keep going should be shot at close range in the stomach with mercury tipped bullets. Jody - no, i'm not bitter at all
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 16:22 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Progress bars Leon Brocard wrote: > And about ETAs: let's not be too accurate, because you know some > foolish programmer will have an ETA that jumps from 2:01 to 2:13 and > back again as it is overly accurate. While we're here, let's have a big hand for the Windows "168759578 minutes remaining" file-copying progress bar! -- Yoz
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 22:50 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Progress bars On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 03:41:22PM +0100, Leon Brocard wrote: > I was installing a driver and utility disk for a digital camera the > other day. The primary installer really installed lots of little > installers which installed other things, most of which had a couple of > progress bars. Multiple progress bars are stupid. Roll them into > one. This installation process showed me 28 progress bars. 28! All I > wanted to know was if it was almost over and how long it would take, > not the details of every file of every package it was trying to > install. Bad programmer, no cookie! Ahh yes, the classic Win98 file copy progress bar. Because you want to know how long it will take to copy each individual file, not the whole set. This is useful information. Almost hypnotizing to watch each bar whizz by. Maybe if it flashes fast enough, it will spell out words. T===I===T===H===E===T===O===M===I===C===R===O===S===O===F===T Did they finally fix this moronic design decision in XP?
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 23:32 on 11 Sep 2003 Subject: Re: Progress bars Michael G Schwern wrote: > Ahh yes, the classic Win98 file copy progress bar. Because you want to know > how long it will take to copy each individual file, not the whole set. This > is useful information. Almost hypnotizing to watch each bar whizz by. > Maybe if it flashes fast enough, it will spell out words. > T===I===T===H===E===T===O===M===I===C===R===O===S===O===F===T > > Did they finally fix this moronic design decision in XP? I believe they fixed it quite a while earlier, actually. -- Yoz
Generated at 10:26 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi