I'm not a huge fan of progress meters generally, since I hate in-page animations. But if you're going to have one, the thin bar growing left to right seems like

I'm not a huge fan of progress meters generally, since I hate in-page animations. But if you're going to have one, the thin bar growing left to right seems like it can't really be improved on. The point of motion actually shifts, so I can judge progress without ever focusing on it. All this gave me was "something in the annoying X button overlay is moving", which was useless and also worsened the impact of an already bad overlay.