Windows XP in a Nutshell

Name

Progress Indicators

Synopsis

The progress indicator is a linear gauge that graphically shows the completion of a particular task, allowing you to roughly estimate the time to completion (see Figure 3-20). The annoying part is that the accuracy of progress indicators is typically not very good; the value (zero to 100 percent) displayed by an indicator is based entirely on approximations made by the application. What’s worse is that some programs, especially application installers, often have several, consecutive progress indicators; unfortunately, these only display the progress of a particular task rather than the entire process, which obviously is not terribly helpful.

Figure 3-20. Often a dialog will show two progress indicators: one showing the completion of the current task and one showing the progress of the entire job