On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Hugh Sasse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Sat, 15 Nov 2008, Jenna Fox wrote: > >> I've found with these sorts of things, taking turns between downloading and >> installing, no matter how granular the progress, no matter how good the >> testing, the progress bars never move at a consistent rate, makes me feel >> distrusting and makes them less valuable as an indicator. > > They are difficult to get right: is it in terms of time to wait, tasks > to be done, data to move? It's all left a bit vague by the entire industry. > There has been some work mentioned on a blog whose location I forget, saying > that progress bars should start off slowly and speed up, that way people > feel they take less long. It's all about human factors, and humans are > such unpredictable systems... :-)
Generally, I don't care as much about a detailed awareness of what's happening as much as a general assurance that things are happening. Usually a gem installation is not going to take very long overall, which is another point for a very basic progress indicator, I think. Apparently the OS X startup progress bar is somewhat of a sham. I found this very interesting: http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#waitingforloginwindow The details mentioned there are no longer relevant on 10.5+, but still an interesting case to consider. -- Seth Thomas Rasmussen http://greatseth.com
