[dnorman]

This is starting to drive me crazy... The little pinwheel isn't enough to know at a glance that a page is still loading, nor how much is left. I really miss the thermometer progress bar in Safari. It doesn't have to be under the address bar - it could be a little thermometer display in the tab thumbnail, but something more meaningful than spin-spin-spin-spin would really help.

[Forrest]

There's always the activity monitor.

[climbingtractor]

I'd have to agree. Stick it in the status bar where it belongs. Bringing up the activity monitor is hardly 'at a glance'.

[andreas_g]

i like omniweb's status indicator. because the way safari does it, is terrible. the bar may show 80% after 2 seconds, and then you have to wait 10 until it is completed.
there is no way to make an exact guess how long a site will take to load, because some resources load quickly, others will take a while.

[dnorman]

I'm not meaning the thermometer as a time-until-loaded estimator, just as a simple theres-still-some-stuff-to-load-but-its-mostly-loaded-already kind of thing.

It could be a simple pie chart indicator in the tab thumbnail, rather than a long thermometer. Just a way to see at a glance if something is partially/mostlly/completely loaded.

[David Latapie]

Originally Posted by dnorman

I'm not meaning the thermometer as a time-until-loaded estimator, just as a simple theres-still-some-stuff-to-load-but-its-mostly-loaded-already kind of thing.

So do I. I really like Safari's progress bar. On Firefox, there was Fusion then Fission (now, both are abandonned). I would like such an indicator for OW (plus it would save me another icon — that would be be two with a merged stop/reload). Of course, there would still be a round loading icon for the mini-tabs—I don't care much about the tab loading, just about the loading of the page I'm presently viewing.

By the way, I use list view exclusively. Back in the days when OW was painfully slow (praise 5.5!), the omnigang advised me to swith to list view and it helped. I have a TiBook 800 and if I can save CPU, I do.

[zottel]

Actually, I would like to see a status bar or pie chart that correctly represents "x of y". X-) Meaning, of course, that it would jump to shorter from longer while loading is in progress. The problem with the usual implementation is that the bar might show 90% when nine out of ten resources are loaded - and then the css is complete, for example, and suddenly there are 60 resources, only ten of which are complete, but the bar stays at 90% till this is correct.

Another suggestion: In the tab icons, instead of that rotating thingy there could be translucent numbers showing the "x of y" values.

[Forrest]

Originally Posted by climbingtractor

Bringing up the activity monitor is hardly 'at a glance'.

How so? If knowing how long something has left to load is important, just put it next to your browser window.

Originally Posted by dnorman

just as a simple theres-still-some-stuff-to-load-but-its-mostly-loaded-already kind of thing.

The thing is, there's nothing anymore accurate about a progress bar than what currently exists. Well, nothing short of the activity monitor. This is because "mostly loaded" is a complete guess. There could be one ad lagging behind so, although the progress bar may show the page is 95% complete, it may only be 5% complete. Looking at the activity monitor is the only real way to have an educated guess on what's left to load. Then you can see that one resource is taking 20 seconds to load but everything else is done.

Another indicator that already exists is in the status bar. It will show something like "15 of 30 resources loaded." This is more accurate than a progress bar. I can see that half of the resources are loaded, but it doesn't imply that the page is halfway done loading - unlike a progress bar.

[dnorman]

but, a complete guess is good enough. a visual indicator that can be stuck in the tab thumbnail is much more useful than having to activate the tab to scan down to the status bar and then parse the "x of y items remaining" line. It's not at-a-glance, and it doesn't work if you're loading up a bunch of tabs.

[Forrest]

Interesting. I'm sure there's a specific name for it, but I'm really happy with the status indicator that Apple introduced so many years ago that has largely replaced progress bars where they aren't accurate. It is much more accurate though less specific. I like the fact it doesn't give false info like a status bar often does.

I would rather computers leave guesswork to me ;)