I got a progress bar, for an operation.
The operation has several sub operations.
Unzip, analyse, cleanup.
I'm trying to make the progress bar be smooth, so that it doesn't
just jump past a quick unzip, and then really take ages during the
analysis. But to do that, I need to know how long the analysis will
take.
The duration of the analysis is dependant on the size of the
information that needs to be analysed.
Now, to know how long the analysis will take, I need to unzip the
data first. So, basically, I can't before hand know how long the
analysis will take, but only during the main operation can I get a
refined estimate of how long is left.
I guess that's a bit like software development, you got a rough idea
of how long it'll take, but only once you started doing enough work
will you really know how long the job will take!
So, what should I do?
1) Have a jumpy progress bar, when part of the bar whizzes by, but
other parts of the bar crawl.
2) Not have a single progress bar, maybe some text saying what
operation is being done, but not really give the idea that any one
item has any proportion in size to any other part. (While more honest
about our lack of knowledge, this doesn't inform the user any more.)
3) Refine the progress bar during the operation, so that it could
actually take a step *downwards*, if after unzipping, the amount of
data to process turns out to be quite high. This could break user
confidence in the progress bar though, it shouldn't really jump down.
4) Try to fudge it. Unzip just the files we need, ahead of time, and
then judge how long the analysis will take, before unzipping the
other files. Unfortunately, this means that we must do some work
before knowing how much time is left. It's starting to lean back
towards the "jumpy progress bar" situation.
Ideas anyone?
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