[Frost1x]

I often see the suggestion to display spin animations instead since estimation is often incredibly difficult if not impossible. I prefer progress bars because even if they aren't accurate, the relative directional growth shows me that something is actually executing. With a spin animation, for all I know, somethings caught in a loop.

[news_to_me]

This seems a little funny to me, since the purpose of the spinner is so that you know the computer isn't caught in a loop — it's "busy". It's true, though, that the computer could still be stuck even though it updates the spinner. This is a hard problem to solve.

Abusing progress bars are not a good response to this, though. I would rather trust progress bars for what they are meant to show rather than as an indication of true activity. After all, you still can't tell whether the progress bar kept moving, but the process is stuck in a loop.

[bryanrasmussen]

>This seems a little funny to me, since the purpose of the spinner is so that you know the computer isn't caught in a loop — it's "busy". It's true, though, that the computer could still be stuck even though it updates the spinner. This is a hard problem to solve.

The problem that people might assume the computer is stuck in a loop or at any rate that the animation is not going to stop is related to spinner animations on websites. Since the spinner is not a function of the browser, but is instead something implemented in the individual site's code, then stopping the spinner needs to be also coded for and many sites neglect to write the code for "when error happens stop spinner and tell them that things went wrong".

So over time people exposed to negligent website spinners start to suspect any spinner that takes too long.

[saagarjha]

That's because spinners used to show that the main thread was still responsive, but these days are used in different contexts where this isn't really something that it applies to anymore.

[bryanrasmussen]

right, I guess that says it more succinctly.

[netcoyote]

In the old days of 68K Mac, it could be even worse. The spinning hourglass was often animated during a timer interrupt, while the main application might have died altogether.