5 ms·

No thanks. I'm not interested in the manipulation of perception. I'd like a progress bar to actually report on progress. If you can't do that, don't feed me bu

No thanks. I'm not interested in the manipulation of perception. I'd like a progress bar to actually report on progress. If you can't do that, don't feed me bullshit blinking lights, and pat yourself on the back. Just tell which part is hanging up, so I can either clear the bottleneck, route around it or throw everything in the trash. I'm torn at this point, about which non-progress bars I hate more these days, Apple's or Microsoft's. Windows used to have the most useless progress bars: https://www.xkcd.com/612/ https://www.xkcd.com/612/ But Apple system updates for OS X are possibly much, much worse. Reporting 20 minutes and taking 90, opaque, inching along pixel by pixel, and not telling you anything about what's slow, or whether there are parts to the process. Just one stupid line, and if it fails in the middle, start over. Is it unzipping, checking the integrity of file hashes, connecting to the internet, not connecting and waiting for a time-out, compiling open-source packages for this particular chip set? One thing's for sure, I've been promised so many minutes, and instead lost hours.

emodendroket 9y ago
Alright, fine, but is there any reason to think you're anything like a typical user?
- tritium 9y ago
  Is there any reason you’d advocate writing “typical” software?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Unless you're writing a programming tool it's very unlikely that most of your users are highly technical users who think like a programmer.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      As an addendum, I was once in a position where I'd have to provide essentially all the support for software I developed. That's no longer the case but the mindset of avoiding designs that are likely to confuse the user (and thus lead to people bothering you to ask about them) stays with me even a few years later.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cr0sh 9y ago
One of the things I've liked about Linux (though some distros have changed this over the years) is how with updates within a package manager GUI (like system updates, or installation of software), it would default to just a progress bar, which was usually fairly accurate, and maybe some text above or below it showing basic info on what is happening. But there was also a "show details" button, which would then open a mini-terminal (of sorts) and show the flow of what is actually happening behind the screen, so to speak (essentially identical to what you'd see if you were installing/updating at the command line). So you not only got a nice and (usually) accurate GUI representation, but if you wanted, you could also see extreme detail of what was going on or why something was taking a long time (maybe it's trying different servers to find a dependency, or it's downloading a file and something is slowing it down - or maybe your router has crashed, and its just sitting there, etc). IMHO, that's a much better way to represent things - keep a simplified view as default, but allow the option to see all the sausage making in the background, for those who want or need it.

emodendroket 9y ago

Alright, fine, but is there any reason to think you're anything like a typical user?

tritium 9y ago
Is there any reason you’d advocate writing “typical” software?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Unless you're writing a programming tool it's very unlikely that most of your users are highly technical users who think like a programmer.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    As an addendum, I was once in a position where I'd have to provide essentially all the support for software I developed. That's no longer the case but the mindset of avoiding designs that are likely to confuse the user (and thus lead to people bothering you to ask about them) stays with me even a few years later.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

cr0sh 9y ago

One of the things I've liked about Linux (though some distros have changed this over the years) is how with updates within a package manager GUI (like system updates, or installation of software), it would default to just a progress bar, which was usually fairly accurate, and maybe some text above or below it showing basic info on what is happening. But there was also a "show details" button, which would then open a mini-terminal (of sorts) and show the flow of what is actually happening behind the screen, so to speak (essentially identical to what you'd see if you were installing/updating at the command line). So you not only got a nice and (usually) accurate GUI representation, but if you wanted, you could also see extreme detail of what was going on or why something was taking a long time (maybe it's trying different servers to find a dependency, or it's downloading a file and something is slowing it down - or maybe your router has crashed, and its just sitting there, etc). IMHO, that's a much better way to represent things - keep a simplified view as default, but allow the option to see all the sausage making in the background, for those who want or need it.