What happened to proper progress bars?

In article , Commander Kinsey
wrote:


Anyway, that's not what I'm complaining about. A progress bar
should move gradually from left to right. But some just slide
back and forth (AVG install for example). And what's the point
of this glittery effect they mostly have now? Even though the
bar is stuck at say 75%, there's a bright shimmer moving all the
way along that 75% to the right. Is that supposed to encourage
the bored user to make him think it's really moving?

It's to re-assure users that something is actually happening under
the hood. Overcomes the tendency of clueless users to assume a
machine crash when there is no movement on the progress bar for 30
secs.

If the whole machine has crashed, the mouse is inoperative.

that depends on the operating system and the severity of the crash.

If the program you're installing etc has crashed, the progress bar keeps
sparkling anyway, so actually it's lying to the user that progress is
being made when it's actually stuck.

it's not lying.

Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 12:22:46 +0100, mechanic wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:57:09 +0100, Commander Kinsey wrote:

Anyway, that's not what I'm complaining about. A progress bar
should move gradually from left to right. But some just slide
back and forth (AVG install for example). And what's the point
of this glittery effect they mostly have now? Even though the
bar is stuck at say 75%, there's a bright shimmer moving all the
way along that 75% to the right. Is that supposed to encourage
the bored user to make him think it's really moving?

It's to re-assure users that something is actually happening under
the hood. Overcomes the tendency of clueless users to assume a
machine crash when there is no movement on the progress bar for 30
secs.

If the whole machine has crashed, the mouse is inoperative.

If the program you're installing etc has crashed, the progress bar keeps
sparkling anyway, so actually it's lying to the user that progress is
being made when it's actually stuck.

I would say, that just about every visual effect known to
man for computers, has been jammed into Windows 10.

I know one you haven't seen.

compact /compactOS:never

and watch as the Sun Microsystems progress indicator
appears in your Command Prompt result. The rotating
character sequence. /-\ etc.

Some of the effects use color palette animation, rather
than copying pixel buffers in sequence. When Windows
claims to be getting something ready and the color of
the screen changes, that's palette animation.

There are "activity indicators" and "progress indicators".
The activity indicators, show that *something* is happening.
Even though I've seen rare cases where an activity is stopped
and the indicator is still working.

If you've ever written software, you'll know then, what
a pain in the ass it is to work out a reasonable progress
value. Take CHKDSK as an example. There are three phases
of the check, they proceed at different speeds, one
portion is variable speed (file size/extended attribute
dependent). It's really not possible, given the variations
in speed, to compute progress. You would need to "pre-scan"
the file system, to work out an accurate progress bar
value for each and every possible instant in time, which
would double the time taken by the operation,
but would undoubtedly make you "happy".

Paul

On 6/14/19 2:12 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:
A progress bar used to be quite simple.* It would move from the left to
the right throughout the installation or whatever you're waiting for.
Now we get all sorts of rubbish, ones that move to the left and right
repeatedly giving no information, ones which have a sparkle which slides
along it (to give the impression it's moving when it isn't?)* No use
whatsoever.

Yes, we need progress indicators that actually indicate progress, not
going back and forth like a Cylon (from the seventies TV series
"Battlestar Galactica") of some other useless thing such as the weird
circular one in Windows 10.

Also there's the "lie zone" (when the progress indicator says 100% but
the process isn't done). This can last a long time.

I remember the one on Internet Explorer (the moving papers going between
folders to indicate a transfer). I've even unplugged the internet
connection and it still keeps going (an indication it's not really
indicating anything).

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the
way of civilization." -- Agnes Repplier

On 6/14/19 5:22 PM, Eric Stevens wrote:

[snip]

Its to encourage the bored user to be aware that the program has not
actually stopped.

AFAIK, the "progress bar" is often an entirely separate process from the
one doing something important, and not dependent on it in any way. The
important process hay have completely stopped and the "progress bar"
keeps on going (as I described earlier with MSIE).

The "indication that the program has not actually stopped" is a lie. I
saw a lot of those when I tried to use the news program "BNR2".

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the
way of civilization." -- Agnes Repplier

In article , Mark Lloyd
wrote:

Yes, we need progress indicators that actually indicate progress, not
going back and forth like a Cylon (from the seventies TV series
"Battlestar Galactica") of some other useless thing such as the weird
circular one in Windows 10.

that's not always possible.

if a the length of a task is unknown, then that's the only option.

Also there's the "lie zone" (when the progress indicator says 100% but
the process isn't done). This can last a long time.

I remember the one on Internet Explorer (the moving papers going between
folders to indicate a transfer). I've even unplugged the internet
connection and it still keeps going (an indication it's not really
indicating anything).

that indicates a bug.

On 6/14/19 5:47 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:

[snip]

That would be inaccurate.* It can

and often does

still display the silly sparkly thing
even though it's crashed.

The indicator is a simpler process with no (disk or network) I/O and so
much less likely to crash.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the
way of civilization." -- Agnes Repplier

On 6/14/19 5:50 PM, nospam wrote:

[snip]

for an indeterminate progress bar, there's no way to know if the
underlying process has crashed or not, other than it taking an
unusually long time...

in fact, i had that happen just the other day with 1903.

The indication could be done more honestly, from the SAME process or at
least in communication with it.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the
way of civilization." -- Agnes Repplier

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 17:30:30 +0100, Paul wrote:

Commander Kinsey wrote:
On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 12:22:46 +0100, mechanic wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:57:09 +0100, Commander Kinsey wrote:

Anyway, that's not what I'm complaining about. A progress bar
should move gradually from left to right. But some just slide
back and forth (AVG install for example). And what's the point
of this glittery effect they mostly have now? Even though the
bar is stuck at say 75%, there's a bright shimmer moving all the
way along that 75% to the right. Is that supposed to encourage
the bored user to make him think it's really moving?

It's to re-assure users that something is actually happening under
the hood. Overcomes the tendency of clueless users to assume a
machine crash when there is no movement on the progress bar for 30
secs.

If the whole machine has crashed, the mouse is inoperative.

If the program you're installing etc has crashed, the progress bar keeps
sparkling anyway, so actually it's lying to the user that progress is
being made when it's actually stuck.

I would say, that just about every visual effect known to
man for computers, has been jammed into Windows 10.

I know one you haven't seen.

compact /compactOS:never

and watch as the Sun Microsystems progress indicator
appears in your Command Prompt result. The rotating
character sequence. /-\ etc.

Seen that loads of times, back in the days of DOS.

Some of the effects use color palette animation, rather
than copying pixel buffers in sequence. When Windows
claims to be getting something ready and the color of
the screen changes, that's palette animation.

There are "activity indicators" and "progress indicators".
The activity indicators, show that *something* is happening.
Even though I've seen rare cases where an activity is stopped
and the indicator is still working.

If you've ever written software, you'll know then, what
a pain in the ass it is to work out a reasonable progress
value. Take CHKDSK as an example. There are three phases
of the check, they proceed at different speeds, one
portion is variable speed (file size/extended attribute
dependent). It's really not possible, given the variations
in speed, to compute progress. You would need to "pre-scan"
the file system, to work out an accurate progress bar
value for each and every possible instant in time, which
would double the time taken by the operation,
but would undoubtedly make you "happy".

A lot of them could clearly be made a lot more accurate though. For example EaseUS backup doing a clone of a disk. Two partitions, one 50 times bigger than the other. But the progress bar shows 50% after completing the small one. DOH!

On 6/15/19 7:21 AM, nospam wrote:

[snip]

If the program you're installing etc has crashed, the progress bar keeps
sparkling anyway, so actually it's lying to the user that progress is
being made when it's actually stuck.

it's not lying.

How is it not lying? It's indicating progress which isn't happening.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the
way of civilization." -- Agnes Repplier

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 18:16:10 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 6/14/19 2:12 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:
A progress bar used to be quite simple. It would move from the left to
the right throughout the installation or whatever you're waiting for.
Now we get all sorts of rubbish, ones that move to the left and right
repeatedly giving no information, ones which have a sparkle which slides
along it (to give the impression it's moving when it isn't?) No use
whatsoever.

Yes, we need progress indicators that actually indicate progress, not
going back and forth like a Cylon (from the seventies TV series
"Battlestar Galactica") of some other useless thing such as the weird
circular one in Windows 10.

Also there's the "lie zone" (when the progress indicator says 100% but
the process isn't done). This can last a long time.

I remember the one on Internet Explorer (the moving papers going between
folders to indicate a transfer). I've even unplugged the internet
connection and it still keeps going (an indication it's not really
indicating anything).

The one you get when doing a search in windows explorer is terrible, it goes very fast from the start then gets slower and slower, with 90% of the progress taking place in the last 5% of the bar. Surely it must know how much it has to search through?!?

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 18:26:15 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 6/14/19 5:47 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:

[snip]

That would be inaccurate. It can

and often does

still display the silly sparkly thing
even though it's crashed.

The indicator is a simpler process with no (disk or network) I/O and so
much less likely to crash.

So the indicator is telling us that the indicator is functioning.

In article , Mark Lloyd
wrote:

If the program you're installing etc has crashed, the progress bar keeps
sparkling anyway, so actually it's lying to the user that progress is
being made when it's actually stuck.

it's not lying.

How is it not lying? It's indicating progress which isn't happening.

the task isn't done.

it might be waiting on something and eventually finish, or it might
have crashed.

In article , Mark Lloyd
wrote:

for an indeterminate progress bar, there's no way to know if the
underlying process has crashed or not, other than it taking an
unusually long time...

in fact, i had that happen just the other day with 1903.

The indication could be done more honestly, from the SAME process

that won't help and is not a good idea.

a progress bar should be on a separate thread, usually the main thread
to draw ui elements, with worker threads doing whatever the actual task
is and sending update messages to the progress bar as needed.

or at
least in communication with it.

normally it is, but if the lengthy task crashes and never sends a done
message, then the progress bar will stall or keep spinning, depending
on what type it is.

better software has a watchdog timer to detect if something is taking
an unusually long time, then shut down the stuck task and alert the
user that something went wrong. unfortunately, most software does not
do that.

Commander Kinsey wrote:

The one you get when doing a search in windows explorer is terrible, it
goes very fast from the start then gets slower and slower, with 90% of
the progress taking place in the last 5% of the bar. Surely it must
know how much it has to search through?!?

Do you think they're Kreskin ?

You'd have to scan the file system twice, to get an estimate.
That means running FindNextFile through the entire tree,
to get a "fresh" file list and estimate of "how may files
it takes to make 100%". A logarithmic progress bar makes
perfect sense, as far as these things go. Even though
I hate that green bar when I see it, I have to admire
the logic of what it does. It's a pretty clever solution
for hiding the ignorance underneath.

You really have to start using your thinking cap,
if you expect to understand why things are the way
they are.

If you wrote your own software, you'd be aware of
"how many ways there are to fail" when making progress
bars.

One of my favorites, was using "one printed period on the
screen, for every one thousand items processed". It's
easy to write a few lines of code to do that. So
what aberrant conditions does it produce.

* In one case, the dots "went off the side of the
screen" and after 79 dots, you couldn't see any
more dots. Doh!

* In a second case, so many dots are produced, the
25x80 text-only terminal, the command you executed
has scrolled off the screen, and the Terminal is
now filled with dots. You walk by the computer and
think "what the hell was I doing?". Because the
command has disappeared off the Terminal, because of
all the dots, now you don't know. Since the shell in
that era had no "History" option, you couldn't actually
check later and see what generated all those dots.
You've earned yourself another "Doh!".

You seem to be fixated on all the failures.

Once you try and do one of your own, you'll
quickly see what a challenge it is. And you'll
begin to understand the technical limitations
of "what I don't know, which causes me not to
know what 100% is". If you don't know what
the weight of 100% is, you can't cut off a
79% sample of that weight.

Doing an operation twice, would give you perfect
information. This is what "two pass movie encoding"
is all about. The first pass generates size estimates
for each frame, and gives "perfect knowledge" for
the second pass, and makes it possible to make
better encoding decisions. And the two-pass movie
encode looks slightly better as a result.

Back in the days when we formatted a 77 track floppy,
you could put a dot on the screen for each track.
Because the process was gated by the mechanical
speed of the floppy, and the rotation of the floppy,
the progress indicator could be simple and linear.
But in 2019, "real" computer operations, their
processing time is quite variable, and the progress
indicator is "so much fudge or bull****". Sorry,
but without two passes, that's the way it has to be.

Paul

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 18:33:29 +0100, Commander Kinsey wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 18:26:15 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 6/14/19 5:47 PM, Commander Kinsey wrote:

[snip]

That would be inaccurate. It can

and often does

still display the silly sparkly thing
even though it's crashed.

The indicator is a simpler process with no (disk or network) I/O
and so much less likely to crash.

So the indicator is telling us that the indicator is functioning.

Well that's a comfort at least!