I agree that what you prefer would be ideal, however a lot of things that happen on the Web isn't conducive to a real "true current state of progress" loader. A

I agree that what you prefer would be ideal, however a lot of things that happen on the Web isn't conducive to a real "true current state of progress" loader. Actually, a lot of things that happen even on local machines are not possible to be determined in an absolute sense. That's why most progress bars seem to progress in fits and spurts, not in smooth consistent amount over time... I think this is due to some tasks just take an indeterminate amounts of time. In those cases, a progress bar isn't much better than a numbered list of things shown as "to do" and "done." In the case like client server request response, which may be asynchronous, where responses are only received when it's "done" then it makes sense why these cannot show progress... Just that it's "still waiting." Not ideal, but I can't see a better solution that doesn't require sending multiple updates back saying "still not really sure when we'll get to your request" or "just fetched stuff from the dB, 2 more tasks to do."