[Tfug] Progress indicators

[Bexley Hall]

Hi, Tim,

--- On Tue, 1/13/09, Tim Ottinger <tottinge at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What's the "best" way to convey to a user the "progress"
> > made on completing a task?
>   
> If the task has discrete steps, I don't mind seeing a
> bar per step, provided all the bars show up, and I know 
> that I have 'n' more steps before done.

Yes, but that (can) exhibit the same sort of nonlinear
behaviour I mentioned.  E.g., you see bars one and two (out
of 7, total) appear at roughly 3 second intervals (e.g.).
But, the third bar takes 5 *minutes* to appear -- followed
by bars 4, 5, 6 and 7 and 1 second intervals.

I *think* the best (?) way to handle it is to make an
initial *quick* estimate of time required and then keep
updating this estimate placing more emphasis on the *quality*
of the estimate as time progresses.  Then, reflect elapsed
time / estimated time as the "portion complete".

I.e., I *think* users are more interested in how the time
involved.

OTOH, there are some tasks where the user may be interested
in "percentage of bytes moved", for example.  This would make
sense when copying files, for example, *if* the files were
copied in a predictable (or visible!) order and the user
*might* be inclined to abort the process:  "Heck, I've
got several of them copied, I can skip the rest because
I'm in a rush..."