Rant: Loading Bars

[AdmiralKird]

10%...

20%...

30%...

35%...

36%...

37%...

38%...

70%...

85%...

100%

What in the name of Paul Bunyan is the use of having a loading bar if it never actually tells you the correct percentage of how much of something is initialized.

[TheoSqua]

It's just to make you feel like something is happening.

If you go to a page/program that just does nothing, the average person will leave/close the application within 4 seconds.

If you put a loading bar that has a little animation and tells you where the program is at the average person will wait for a minute or more.

As to why the loading bar jumps, it depends on the programming that the bar is used. Flash uses a means of dividing the bytes of the program that is loaded by the amount that still needs to load, so you'll very rarely see big jumps in the loading bar. Other programming languages divide the amount downloaded by the partitions or objects left to download. So if an application has to download a sound object, an image object, a text object, and a movie clip. Each will represent 25% of the load time on the bar, but the text/image objects will download in a fraction of the time that the sound/movie objects load.

Either way, the whole point of the object bar is so the user has something shiny to look at while the program loads so that they don't leave.

EDIT: fancy, i actually remembered something from college!

[StatmanCrothers]

perhaps its exactly accurate, and that piece of the file around 35-37% didn't fit properly and the loading program had to keep turning it different ways, even going back and rearranging the previous 10-15% until it finally loaded. once it got to the final 15% it had it all figured out and it all just fell into place.

[JackofDiamonds]

It's like elevators. People get agitated if they have to wait more than, say, 28 seconds(according to a New Yorker article). So what they do is make a door ding, well before the elevator arrives, and the waiting masses are complacent for another 30 seconds or so.

[StatmanCrothers]

It's like elevators. People get agitated if they have to wait more than, say, 28 seconds(according to a New Yorker article). So what they do is make a door ding, well before the elevator arrives, and the waiting masses are complacent for another 30 seconds or so.

Most people don't press the button right. they'll think they've already got it covered, but then I'LL push it just right, and the elevator will then show up.

[wart57]

It's like elevators. People get agitated if they have to wait more than, say, 28 seconds(according to a New Yorker article). So what they do is make a door ding, well before the elevator arrives, and the waiting masses are complacent for another 30 seconds or so.

Most people don't press the button right. they'll think they've already got it covered, but then I'LL push it just right, and the elevator will then show up.

doesn't hitting the button multiple times make the elevator arrive more quickly?

[Arthur Dent]

I resent features which treat people as fools to be manipulated. Programmers, write progress bars that make sense. You can do it.

[TheoSqua]

I resent features which treat people as fools to be manipulated. Programmers, write progress bars that make sense. You can do it.

A lot of times it's not the programmers, it's limitations of the programming language.

[JackofDiamonds]

It's like elevators. People get agitated if they have to wait more than, say, 28 seconds(according to a New Yorker article). So what they do is make a door ding, well before the elevator arrives, and the waiting masses are complacent for another 30 seconds or so.

Most people don't press the button right. they'll think they've already got it covered, but then I'LL push it just right, and the elevator will then show up.

doesn't hitting the button multiple times make the elevator arrive more quickly?

Absolutely. Especially if you just watched me hit it.

/The close door functions are disengaged as well, they only work if you have the emergency key engaged.

[cards2468]

I hate it when a loading bar goes the entire distance... so you think it's done. And then it starts again and reaches the end faster than before... but it's still not done... and it does it again and again and again. See Office Space when he's trying to duck out of the office before being asked to come in Saturday.