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Anyone else here have an unhealthy fascination with progress bars?

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superboyac:
Maybe it's just me, but I love watching a good progress bar.  What makes it good?  i don't know.  Each progress bar has its own special personality.  You have the classic XP progress bar.  You have the different flavors that come with the installation packages.  You have the jelly-like, blue-striped Mac progress bar.  My favorite kind of progress bar is the kind that has lots of stuff going on: multiple bars, lines within lines (think Winrar).  I also like smaller increments.  I hate it when progress bars skip through the thing in big 25% chunks.  I want to see every percent, it gives me pleasure for some reason.

mouser:
One of the saddest things that has happened in modern times is that almost everything you ask your computer to do is done instantly.

Now most people will tell you that's a great thing, but I'm here to tell you that I remember the days when I would start a program compiling and go off to have dinner while it worked.  Those were the days.

There is nothing quite like knowing your computer friend is hard as work on something while you go take a nap or grab a bite to eat.

That's always been one of the appeals of doing scientific work on the computer -- I once ran a program on my pc that took 2 months to run and it was an unadulterated pleasure.

Progress bars are just the icing on the cake :)

steeladept:
Okay, you caught me  ;)

I do too.  My favorites are the stylized ones you see in some games.  I always get a kick in finding out what they look like full.  I also always thought a cool bar would be one that had short statements (proverbs, maybe) that would only show as the progress continued.  It would also change statements so it doesn't get stale like most do after a few uses.

superboyac:
One of the saddest things that has happened in modern times is that almost everything you ask your computer to do is done instantly.

Now most people will tell you that's a great thing, but I'm here to tell you that I remember the days when I would start a program compiling and go off to have dinner while it worked.  Those were the days.

There is nothing quite like knowing your computer friend is hard as work on something while you go take a nap or grab a bite to eat.

That's always been one of the appeals of doing scientific work on the computer -- I once ran a program on my pc that took 2 months to run and it was an unadulterated pleasure.

Progress bars are just the icing on the cake :)
-mouser (January 11, 2011, 10:55 AM)
--- End quote ---
That's true!  I totally miss my lab research days.  That free schedule was kind of unique and cool.  Now, I have to just work set hours.  It was fun going to lab in the morning, letting something run, go do something else for a few hours, come back at night.  It was a fun lifestyle.  Now, everything is so ordinary and rote.

f0dder:
I prefer progress bars that convey the intended information without a lot of fuzz - so I'm not a fan of too much animation or going nuts with gradients and the like. That's how I generally like UI elements: simple and stylish.

I did like WinRAR's compression progress bar that indicated compression ratio, but that seems to have gone with recent(ish) versions? It wasn't über-fancy, and it conveyed useful information.

Oh, and I've been guilty of inserting delay timers in two installers I've made, because installation was too damn fast... even on the old machines those several years back when I did the software :-[ :-[ :-[

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