On 7/12/10 1:56 PM, "Luck, Tony" <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Anas Nashif <[email protected]> >wrote: >> 5 update bundles available but every bundle consists of multiple >>packages. This is clearly a UI problem that needs some attention. >> >>> >>> 4. After a few minutes at half-way the progress bar leaped all the way >>>to the >>> right, and a pop-up window told me that the update had completed >>>successfully. >>> >> >> Progress bar are never accurate :( > >So perhaps here bundles 1, 2, 4, 5 were very small, and bundle 3 had >the bulk of the work. >Thus the progress bar went rapidly to 40% when the first two bundles >completed. Then >sat there for a long time while bundle 3 was processed. Once bundle 3 >was complete it >went to 60% and then it jumped quickly to the end as the small bundles >4 & 5 were processed? > >Progress bars that don't show progress are a pet peeve of mine. The >worst are the ones >that reset to zero after getting to 100%, and then begin inching >across the screen again. >Which leaves me with no idea how long the task will take because having >done the >reset to zero once there is no way to tell how many times it may be >repeated. > >> The operation here consists of downloading delta rpms, applying them >>and installing them at the end. >> This is very difficult to estimate with the progress bar. > >If there is a quick way to get an estimate of how many files will be >touched, then >that might serve as a good heuristic - update times are usually dominated >by the >time taken for synchronous writes to file system meta-data. You'd also >need to >make the estimates based in the packages within each bundle and update the >progress bar as each sub-task completes. Having just five items leaves the >progress too vulnerable to large variations between the items. Splitting >across >a bigger number will even out the bumps. > >If that isn't practical (or doesn't do any better) - then just abandon >the progress bar. >I'd rather just have a spinning helicopter that doesn't pretend to know >when the >update will complete than a lying progress bar that provides false >information. While I understand where you're coming from with this, the problem with the helicopter is that there is no intermediate feedback. All you know is that the update is _supposed_ to be doing something but you have no idea if anything is really going on. With the progress bar, you at least know intermediate steps are happening. Yes, it is completely annoying to have something that isn't accurate, but isn't that better than having no feedback at all? Ryan _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
