[Javascript] Show a progress bar while waiting for a download to begin?

[tedd]

At 9:39 AM -0500 6/9/06, Scott Reynen wrote:
>On Jun 9, 2006, at 7:57 AM, Steve Clay wrote:
>
>>Unless your backend gives you access to its generation progress (or even if
>>it does), I recommend faking it.
>
>This is what OS X does with the startup progress bar, and no one seems to notice:
>
>http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#waitingforloginwindow
>
>Peace,
>Scott

To all:

Instead of a progress bar, I like to use the spinning wheel thing that Mac has. See:

http://www.xn--ovg.com/a4.php

That way, you never have to computer a time, fake it, or anything but show "Hey, wait for the spinning wheel to stop."

As an interesting side note. Over 20 years ago a company made an electronic hand-held chess game.

While it was a successful game, they received a considerable amount of repairs, way over what they had expected, and wanted to find out why. After an investigation, they found that their software had made the computer's chess-moves TOO quickly. So, they place a time delay into their software so that it would look to the user like the computer put some thought into the move.

Apparently, some end-users got pissed when they thought the computer could so easily beat them. But, if it took time for the computer to beat them, then that was more acceptable and the end-users were less adapt to throw the game into a wall.

So software engineering, with respect to how users view what's going on, is important even if it may look like a sham.

tedd
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