Skip to content

Comment on Ask HN: Why don't progress bars ever work properly?

Comments

What really gets me down is when an indeterminate progress indicator is displayed during a determinate process.

There's no real way to know ahead of time how long a DNS lookup will take, so an indeterminate indicator is appropriate for that.

But when downloading a large file, the size of the file is often declared at the very start, in its HTTP header, yet we commonly get a spinning whirligig or a barber pole rather than an advancing bar.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.