A progress indicator is an element of a

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

, a textual user interface, or a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

that is intended to inform the user that an operation is in progress, to reassure that the system is not hung or waiting for user input, and often to provide the user with an estimate of how far through a task the system has progressed.

Examples of progress indicators

* A

progress bar A progress bar is a graphical control element used to visualize the progression of an extended computer operation, such as a download, file transfer, or installation. Sometimes, the graphic is accompanied by a textual representation of the progre ...

, a typically horizontal bar which is gradually filled with a color as the process completes. * A throbber, an image in a program's interface which animates to show that the software is busy. * A splash screen, covering all or most of the computer screen while a program is loading. * Turning the mouse pointer into an hourglass or a spinning pinwheel to indicate to the user that they should not click anything until the active process is complete. * A simple textual

percentage In mathematics, a percentage () is a number or ratio expressed as a fraction (mathematics), fraction of 100. It is often Denotation, denoted using the ''percent sign'' (%), although the abbreviations ''pct.'', ''pct'', and sometimes ''pc'' are ...

figure, common in

CLI CLI may refer to: Computing * Call Level Interface, an SQL database management API * Command-line interface, of a computer program * Command-line interpreter or command language interpreter; see List of command-line interpreters * CLI (x86 instruc ...

applications. * A growing row of dots indicating the progress in loading a file (as done in some

boot sector A boot sector is the disk sector, sector of a persistent data storage device (e.g., hard disk, floppy disk, optical disc, etc.) which contains machine code to be loaded into random-access memory (RAM) and then executed by a computer system's bui ...

s and text-mode operating systems) i.e. "Loading......".

Examples of progress indicators

References

Further reading