August 2018
Beginner
414 pages
3h 16m
English
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Chapter #55. Use a "Linear" Progress Bar if a Task will Take a Determinate Amount of Time
Despite your iPhone having the number-crunching power of a late-1990s supercomputer, everyday tasks still seem to take a maddeningly long time in a lot of software. Printing, for example: why does it take so long for the computer to send a document to a printer? It's as if the printer has to work out how to be a printer every time. Regardless, it's a great idea to let users know how long they're going to be waiting for.
Never show a series of completing progress bars, for example:
- Copying: 0...10..50..100%
- Decompressing: 0..20...60..100%
- Installing: 0...15...45...80...100%
- Finishing up: 0...20...60...100%
That should have just been one progress bar:
The perfect ...