Comment by vortico
7 years ago
No it's not. It doesn't prove anything, and there are ways you can prove it that don't deceive the user, like a status message at the end or a change of button text. The value of a progress bar is for the user to see the state of a background process, not to see whether it suceeded. Don't assume that all your users, or even a small proportion, think this.
I'm not suggesting deceiving users. I'm suggesting a spinner isn't much proof of the app not being hung. Some kind of updating status or progress is, assuming it's not complete bullshit. I can see cases where "slightly bullshit, but somewhat true" is better than just a spinner or unresponsive UI.
>Some kind of updating status or progress is, assuming it's not complete bullshit
This is where we agree. If the progress bar is bullshit (like the IE6 loading bar), then it means just as much to most users as a spinning beach ball, but slightly more insulting to the users' intelligence/experience.