[whatwg] Status bars and progress indicators

[Matthew Thomas]

On 8 Sep, 2004, at 8:16 AM, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> ...
> A multi-purpose statusbar for specific controls/ collections of
> controls would be useful imho: overriding (intercepting?) the UA's
> statusbar for XmlHttpRequests/ transactions between the server, as
> well as providing a useful place for feedback to a user.

"Scripts can't turn off the status bar."  
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/secnews/articles/ 
itproviewpoint081104p2.mspx>

If a browser vendor can't trust you enough to let you turn off the  
status bar, I doubt they'll ever trust you enough to let you replace it  
with your own.

> ...
> Enables more complex web applications that 'load' in the background;
> and a user can move on to other tasks (ie, logging in via an
> XmlHttpRequest but already starting to author content for a blog
> comment or somesuch.)

A standard <progressmeter> (or <progress>) element might be useful, so  
that non-page progress indication can be more consistent, instead of  
every app developer coming up with their own zany animation. For  
backward compatibility, it could be a container element, like this:

     <progressmeter>(86 %)</progressmeter> Uploaded 46 K of 54 K

A graphical UA would take the "(86 %)", strip out the non-numeric stuff  
(i.e. everything except the "86" and the "%"), recognize it as 0.86,  
and replace the element with a graphical progress meter representing  
that fraction:
      ________
     [(((((((():] Uploaded 46 K of 54 K

If such an element is introduced, a <gauge> element should be  
introduced at exactly the same time, so that the Web doesn't fall into  
the same trap Mac OS did when it had one but not the other, and  
developers were confusing people by using progress indicators to  
indicate non-progress fractions (like relevance and quota usage).

     <dt><a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/webforms2.html">Web
     Forms 2.0 - notes and comments</a></dt>
     <dd class="uri">http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/webforms2.html</dd>
     <dd>Relevance: <gauge>14 %</gauge></dd>

Which in a graphical UA would produce:

     _Web Forms 2.0 - notes and comments_
         http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/webforms2.html
         Relevance: [##:::::::::]

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/