Minimal

When lots of progress is no progress at all

What is it with people implementing progress bars these days? Everywhere I look, from software installations to IDE build tools, developers are getting lazy. Progress through multiple steps in long operations requires a single progress bar, not multiple bars in succession. Get it right, people! It’s not like you don’t know this. :/

What’s the big deal? As soon as a second progress bar appears, you can no longer predict how long the operation will take to complete. Should you wait a few seconds more, or should you come back tomorrow? You’ve no idea, as you can’t predict how many more progresses you have to sit through. The progress bar has lost its key benefit — predictability. Instead, all it tells the user is that the application hasn’t died. The better way is to assign each operation a fraction of a single progress bar. Just ask Ash, our resident nested progress bar expert at work.

What if your operation is non-deterministic? Well, you shouldn’t be using a progress bar in the first place. Instead, you might want to consider a looped animation of some sort, make it damned clear you’ve no idea how long it’ll take, and offer the option to cancel. You might also want to include a time-out mechanism. Whatever you do, don’t fool the user into thinking they can predict how long they need to wait.

Right, rant over.