Somewhere between the “Please Wait…” of the DOS era and the present, we had a great program feature called a progress bar. It told you, in no uncertain terms, how long you had to wait before a certain lengthy task or operation was complete. Granted, it was seldom predictable, calibrated or even steady: I recall some that would speed up to 98% and stay there for 98% of the time. But, at least, you knew that when it got to the end, the thing was done.

We even had double progress bars: one for a subtask, like a file copy, and one for the whole process, like a program installation. Those were even better.

Well, as befits the political norm of the Bush era, things have gotten corrupted. Or, perhaps programmers have just gotten lazy. Now, we see more and more “progress bars” that are merely activity indicators: when they get to the end, they START OVER! How frustrating and stupid. Even Microsoft is guilty of using these “recirculating” bars.

Apple got it right: An activity indicator should be in the shap of a circle, a metaphor for uncertain, even infinite time. A bar should only be used where the end is anticipated and finite, to convey relative time. Let’s rally against the misuse of these formerly univesal symbols!