Except that it may tell you no such thing. All it tells you is that the process filling the meter hasn't locked; there may be zero connection to reality behind the scenes.
The project I work on has two faked progress meters. One occurs in a login scenario and appears to be a marker of how much is done, but once it fills all the way, it empties and starts to refill. (Which tells the user: "Ha! Psyche! This could take forever, and you'll never know if we're actually doing anything!") Another one downloads as update and counts by %... or rather, shows % but counts time, so once if it gets to 100% (because of a server connection issue), it just continues to spin. (And then there was the one meter I saw a few years back that would count up to like 120%. Either it was also actually counting time spent, and reflected a bad estimate on someone's part, or they later added more stuff for it to do and didn't recalibrate. Really freaky.) -- Jim -----Original Message----- >From: Tracy Boyington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >As long as its animated, even a "fudged" progress bar tells me that my >computer has not locked up. That's really all I ask for. > >>>> Michael Tuminello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 1/1/2008 6:48 PM >>> >A good general example of this in software design would be progress >bars. Some are in fact accurate but many are fudged to some degree >or other, and in that case they are just a design element that has >been produced to elicit the desired response (patience) from the user. ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
