Why do people do this?

[attachment=15209:bluestacks.png]

some tips:

1. Not being able to calculate the progress properly

2. Being lazy in determining the time cost of calculations and the programmer just puts the progress bar into some high level code and the progress bar is simply/lazily proportional to the iterator

3. The progress bar was okay on the developer's system

4. Shit download speeds or a bird flew through the datastream

5. Your employer is running some spy programs on your workstation

6. the developers be shitfuk

I think it's pretty much #2 most of thr time. For example, i load 10 images into my program, each time an image finishs loading, i update the progress bar. Images 1-9 are tiny 128x128 textures, where image #10 is my huge. 4096x4096 background canvas. It's likely the programmer put little thought into doing any serious analyzing the metrics to make sure the progress bar progresses at an even pace.

I think the bigger annoyance is "Estimated time remaining...". It's about as reliable as a blind eye witness.

Like slicer4ever says, it's because the progress bar is calculated by dividing the current item index with the total number of items. If each item consumes the same amount of time, that's fine. But that's usually not the case.

You can make it look better by using a preprocess step or another metric (bytes when downloading, for instance), but most don't.

I also really appreciate when I spend x minutes waiting for a progress bar to complete and then it just starts over again.

Like slicer4ever says, it's because the progress bar is calculated by dividing the current item index with the total number of items. If each item consumes the same amount of time, that's fine. But that's usually not the case.

You can make it look better by using a preprocess step or another metric (bytes when downloading, for instance), but most don't.

I feel like there was a study somewhere that looked at progress bars and something about it being there and not static was just as useful as it being accurate to most users. I think it's a TCR for Windows Store Apps (edit: Non-static loading screens I mean).

I also really appreciate when I spend x minutes waiting for a progress bar to complete and then it just starts over again.

Yeah, or like those installers where the progress bar resets at least five times a second for an entire minute, like, you may as well not display anything because that's about as informative.

I also really appreciate when I spend x minutes waiting for a progress bar to complete and then it just starts over again.

Yeah, or like those installers where the progress bar resets at least five times a second for an entire minute, like, you may as well not display anything because that's about as informative.

Yeah. Those ones.

I just wonder about the design process there.

"Let's put a progress bar!"

"Why?"

"Uh..... Shiny?"