Re: [Usability] Progress Bars

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

Age Bosma wrote:
> ...
> I'm wondering, since it's not mentioned in the HIG, what would be the 
> preferred way of displaying two progress bars? One for the total 
> progress and one for the progress of individual tasks in one dialog.

My recommendation would be: don't. Use a progress bar only to show 
progress of an overall task, not progress of individual components. 
Having multiple progress bars, or making a progress bar repeatedly empty 
and fill for the same overall task, both encourage subconscious mistrust 
of progress bars in general.

If you need to show more fine-grained progress for individual components 
(such as progress for individual files), use text -- one line to name 
the component, the next to give the progress of that component. For example:
 ________________________________________
|::::::: Copying to "Age's USB" ::::::(-)|
|                                        |
| Items remaining to copy:            17 |
| [########:::::::::::::::::] (  Stop  ) |
| __                                     |
| \/ Time remaining: about 2 minutes     |
|      Current item: Foo                 |
|            Copied: 768 K of 1.28 MB    |
|________________________________________|

--
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/