Re:UI Web Design 5 Rules of Thumb
by happytoexplain on Friday December 23, 2022 @03:10PM
(#34110084)
>Progress bar controls typically have an indeterminate flavor too
Good point - I was simplifying by referring to all progressive animations as "progress bars" and all non-progressive animations as "spinners".
>indeterminate operations progress too
I normally think of "non-progressive" and "indeterminate" as synonymous in this context. If the UI can't tell what fraction of the whole has been completed by any metric (which could even include best guesses based on historical data), I refer to that as non-progressive or indeterminate, interchangeably.
Cool, I figured we were just using different words for the same thing. I learned a lot of this stuff in the "Inside Macintosh" days, so my UX argot tends to align with it. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Re:UI Web Design 5 Rules of Thumb
by wintogreen74 on Friday December 23, 2022 @05:22PM
(#34111274)
Even determinate progress bars are challenging because they typically represent a portion of a known measure that doesn't necessarily match with the user's measure of reference. Example: "75%" complete might mean 75 of 100 files updated while the user is thinking "It's taken 15 minutes so 5 minutes longer.
Spinners are typically used for "indeterminate" operations while progress bars are typically used for "determinate" operations¹.
"Progressive" is a less useful adjective here because indeterminate operations progress too, and it's just that their total duration can't be usefully estimated.
And as you note these aren't hard-and-fast rules, and a spinner is generally a perfectly fine choice for short determinate operations.
¹ Progress bar controls typically have an indeterminate flavor too, and these can be mixed. For example, you'll typically see an indeterminate form of a progress bar until a total duration can be estimated, at which point the progress bar will change to its determinate form.