This extends to how people think about teaching others about computers. I would get so frustrated with E-mails that consisted of about 9 “steps” to walk throug

This extends to how people think about teaching others about computers. I would get so frustrated with E-mails that consisted of about 9 “steps” to walk through when using a WEB site, instead of posting a direct link to the final target! The progress animations are out of control too. Every time I see one, I imagine the engineering hours it took to animate and wondered if they could have just spent hours optimizing the code instead. The weirdest thing about a lot of progress indicators is that developers don’t even get the point: your indicator has to be in sync with the activity! It has to give meaningful updates, it can’t just be a background animation that looks alive even when the server has died and isn’t coming back.