Making the parse-job progress bar more subtle

[Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen]

On Thursday 29 July 2010 16:02:43 Milian Wolff wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I'd
like to get a discussion started on the progress bar in our left bottom
>
corner. A few users already complained to me about it flashing too much. I
>
have to admit that I have a very two-sided opinion on that myself:
> 
> -
the progress bar makes sense when a long job is running, like a project
>
import job
> - the progress bar is annoying when I change something in a
file, it is
> often (depending on the file size, but well) just flashing and
directly
> gone again.
> 
> Simply showing the progress bar delayed to
prevent the flashing is imo just
> a work around and would still flash for
jobs that take $delay +
> fewmsecs...
> 
> Maybe we could at least use a
desaturated progress bar? Or a just a non-
> animated progress notifier?
Or...?
> 
> Ideas? Your opinion?
> 
> Bye

  The vast majority of cases of
flashing would be caught by the delay thing, and it is in fact what's done
in many other places where similar flickering type things are likely to
happen. So, 1+ for adding a delay of 500ms to 1s (jobs that take shorter
than that anyway are really not relevant to show progress for, as the user
isn't actually waiting).
  As Millian points out, this would still cause
some jobs to flash, but it seems to me that we really have two different
types of jobs here: Those that cause the flashes (less than half a second,
mostly considerably less) and those that take a longer time (more than a
second, most often some amount more, multiple seconds). As such, it seems
clear to me that we can apply Occam's Razor here and just add that delay.
 
So, my suggestion: Don't over-engineer this one, add the delay and see if
that tiny change might add that bit of elegance we need there :)

P.S.: Yup,
i just went buzz-wordey on you ;)

-- 
..Dan // Leinir..
http://leinir.dk/


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