The Uber app shows a bogus map animation when its "locating 3 cars in your area"
Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
171–180 of 200 posts
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#172I had a report in Microsoft Access that took about five minutes to run - and the users hated it. I had the application throw up a fake dialog with fake messages about "Collating data, Cross checking, Sorting" and other such nonsense. The report now took eight minutes to run because I had to abuse the "On Timer" event for it to work. The users were delighted with the improvement.
I remember reading long ago about how they did something similar at an airport(Dallas IIRC). Basically, people complained about baggage claim taking too long, so they just moved the baggage claim area to the other side of the airport, so it took longer for passengers to reach it, by the time they did, their bags would already be there, so the complaints stopped.
I wish they would do it at Dallas. Most of the baggage carousels are ~100 feet from the gate. Many impatient people!
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#173Reminds me when i was a kid and was writing some GUI shell like Windows 3.1 (it only looked like it, of course, it was really just DOS programs :-P). I used a 386 and WfW 3.11 and Windows took a long time to run. Mine launched instantly and it felt "cheap". So to make it look more serious i added a loop that created and deleted files with small random delays inbetween and a progress bar that filled :-P. This way i go…
I notice that with Minetest, which is essentially an open-source Minecraft clone. I can go from desktop to walking around ingame in about 3 seconds (and my system is not actually particularly powerful).
As a result, it's sort of become my short-work-break game and I keep on thinking that I would play a "real game", if I ever have the time for it.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why every thread about Web applications needs someone to tell me that technically HTML was just designed to be a document format. OK, great, now it isn't just that.
First someone states that the way web sites work now sucks. Then the next person states, ‘Well we used to build sites this way and then it doesn’t suck’. And then the next person comes in saying ‘well that just isn’t the way we build sites now’. If that isn’t the way we build sites now, either change the way we build sites or accept that it sucks. But this is Hacker News so we’re supposed to think about different way…
It's just... what's the point of talking to anyone who will listen about how HTML was designed for hypertext? Yes, we all know that. Today the world's most-popular Web sites include YouTube and Facebook. We aren't going back.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this really isn't deception but actually solving the problem which is that passengers didn't want to stand around.
Seems like the passengers could have solved this themselves, by just walking in circles.
Or walking on the people movers and escalators going in the opposite direction!
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#176I had a report in Microsoft Access that took about five minutes to run - and the users hated it. I had the application throw up a fake dialog with fake messages about "Collating data, Cross checking, Sorting" and other such nonsense. The report now took eight minutes to run because I had to abuse the "On Timer" event for it to work. The users were delighted with the improvement.
Missed opportunity for "reticulating splines"
The tradition of "reticulating splines" started in Maxis games:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Reticulating_splines
And now lots of other games and web sites do it too, even compiling Firefox:
http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Reticulating_splines/Usage_outsid...
The "Stage 5" evacuation completion detection timer in Austin Powers could have used a tad longer debouncing delay:
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a deliberate delay is added to a UI to make it clear to the user that actual work is being done, this is not deception. It is deception. It's less obvious in case of a program, but imagine it when you're using some service in real life. You bring in a car for repairs, the mechanic says "right, I'm doing it now", goes to the other room and starts reading a newspaper. After some deliberate delay, fixes an obvious…
I think the difference is the amount of time. In your mechanic example, I have to wait probably a few minutes extra. Maybe total time goes from 15 to 25 minutes. 10 minutes is a significant time. When dealing with computers however, the time goes from 100ms to 2 seconds. People generally don't mind.
Absolutely this. It's the time difference.
The mechanic could say "I'm very experienced with this kind of repair and was able to perform it quickly" in a lot less time than it would take to read a newspaper in the next room.
The computer can say, "We checked your taxes against 2,683 rules in 0.002 seconds" but the user would take as long to read this as it would take to insert an artificial delay.
But stepping back a bit for context, the only reason I'm pointing out the benevolence -- or at least harmlessness -- of this kind of artifice, is to also point out that the article lumps it in with real deception. This looks to me like an attempt to create a slippery slope toward excusing all kinds of deception.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. Web browsers have progress bars. I think your complaint is with "sites" that just serve a JS payload and then load "the real site" entirely from requests made by JS. Turns out if you generate and serve actual HTML, you get a progress bar for free!
I don't know why every thread about Web applications needs someone to tell me that technically HTML was just designed to be a document format. OK, great, now it isn't just that.
He did not say that. Generating the HTML for the initial page load server-side does not make HTML "just a document format". It improves loading and search-friendliness of your web site.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're happy until 30 minutes later when the progress bar is still getting asymptotically closer to the end, and you come to suspect that the only thing that didn't crash was the progress bar.
>when the progress bar is still getting asymptotically closer to the end That, my friend, is an impressive command of the English language. Thank you for teaching me the word asymptotically! [0] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/asymptotically
At least it didn't say "orthagonal". Don't know why, but that word pops up here way too often.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#180I had a report in Microsoft Access that took about five minutes to run - and the users hated it. I had the application throw up a fake dialog with fake messages about "Collating data, Cross checking, Sorting" and other such nonsense. The report now took eight minutes to run because I had to abuse the "On Timer" event for it to work. The users were delighted with the improvement.
Erik Naggum reported that removing garbage collection messages from Emacs caused people to think it had been sped up: http://grokbase.com/t/perl/perl6-internals/00cmr2ak01/garbag...