Progress bar

A progress bar (also loading bar, status bar or progress bar, engl. Progress bar) is a visual indication of the running, loading or installation time of a computer program. He is the computer equivalent of the bar graph display. In the current Microsoft terminology, this element is called a status display.

A progress bar is usually made ​​of a (often colored ) bar that visually represents the progress of the program run, the load or installation process by increasing from 0 % to 100 %, and a percentage indicator that shows how far the process already is completed. This is ( roughly ) yields the residual duration of the operation. Progress bar can also be found often at download programs.

Even the display of the progress bar consumes resources and can increase the overall duration of the procedure which may provide, but this is in practice hardly in the relevant area. In addition, in order to be displayed to the user simplified that the program still works and works.

On the development of the progress bar a patent about the company Sony was filed by Thomas Poslinski and Kim Annon Ryal, which is considered trivial patent.

For devices, especially in earlier times, when the graphics capabilities were not as developed, progress bars were also often made ​​in text representation from a growing number of ( similar ) characters, such as XXXXXX, for example ....

A variant is a display that can not display progress bar as it is not known how long must be maintained until the completion of the action, but where still needs to be made ​​clear that the computer is actively working and not stuck. This display can be realized as an indeterminate progress bar, which uses a partial bar instead of a bar graph that continuously moves in one direction and is reset immediately at the end of the display. Alternatives are elements such as Throbber or cursor waiting in shape (eg, hourglass), or in text mode, for example, escape sequences without cursor continues to move.