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The Interface Designer
Wait For It
The Art and Science of Waiting
Issue: 5.1 (September/October 2006)
Author: Toby Rush
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 8,903
Starting Page Number: 46
RBD Number: 5120
Resource File(s): None
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
On every one of my computers, I have the seconds displayed in my menubar clock. It's not anything involving an obsession with perfectly synchronized clocks (well, okay, maybe there's a little bit of that); it's because having the seconds visible makes it very easy to tell if my computer has frozen up or not. If the computer seems unresponsive, I just look up at the menubar; if I can see the seconds ticking, I know that my computer is still ticking, at least at some level.
And this brings us to an interesting topic: computer users need to know, even if it's just on a subconscious level, that their computer is responsive. Even with the faster and faster computers that are available to us, there are many things that take a while for a computer to do: copying a huge file from one computer to another, opening an enormous iPhoto library, even doing a Spotlight search on a large hard disk. When the computer undertakes a process that takes longer than even a few seconds, the user needs to know that the machine hasn't come to a grinding halt.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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