Progress Indicator (Progress Bar)

Updated: May 7, 2004; G. Waloszek

Figure 1: The progress indicator in Windows 95 (copying files)

Figure 2: The progress indicator as realized in the Macintosh OS 7.x (copying files)

Figure 3: The progress indicator as realized in the BeOS with pausing option (copying files)

Purpose

The Progress bar is an analog indicator for the progress of an ongoing process.

Applications

Time consuming processes on a computer like copying files, processing images, converting files etc.

Authors

Unknown to me...

Remarks

Obviously progress bars are not a brand new GUI element. However, you can do it more or less fancy – and you can do it more or less useful.

The Windows 95 progress indicator for copying files provides a fancy animation. However, it is a good example of how you can get it wrong. This progress indicator displays the progress for the copying of the current file only. There is no indication of how long the total copying process will last. The added time estimates (again for the current file only) are another gimmick that you cannot trust and that is not very useful...

The Macintosh progress indicator is far more useful, because it tells you about the progress of the copying as a whole. It could be improved, however, e.g. by indicating the total number of files that is being copied – not only the number of the remaining files.

The BeOS progress indicator adds two new features: (1) several processes are combined into one dialog (the same is done in Macintosh OS X), (2) individual processes can be temporarily paused so that other processes can proceed faster.