It's only lying if your users are completely rational aliens that have linear perception of the passage of time.
By the way, people do really not expect progress bars to be correct. They may with they were, but not expect.
By the way, people do really not expect progress bars to be correct. They may with they were, but not expect.
5 minutes left, 4 minutes, 23 days, 1 minute, 4000 years left.
The last 1% Taking longer the first 99%
If you installed the same software repeatedly get an idea of how long each section of the bar would take.
Windows 3.1 I’m looking at you.
Page 311 of the .NET Framework Design Guidelines has this quote from Chris Sells (then a program manager for .NET, I think):
> Please make progress reporting move forward, if for no other reason than my family makes fun of me when they see a progress report going backwards, as if it's my fault. Personally, I've implemented several progress percentage algorithms and while I often can't get the timing to be smooth through all stages of an operation, at least they always move forward. In fact, I think you'd have to work extra hard to make them move backwards.