Thermometer Bar Abuse

I upgraded my Adobe Acrobat version the other day. Apparently Acrobat has had something like 4 new important upgrades within the last six months. What's with these Adobe folks, don't they realize we have better things to do than to be continually asked if we want to upgrade our software? And then wait for it to upgrade? And don't get me started on Firefox. Those guys think I need a new version every week. Actually, my browser is working quite fine today, thank you.

But wait, that's not even what this rant is about. It's about the "Progress Bars" that you see when the upgrade is being installed. Now I've been looking at progress bars since 1988 when I ran PageMaker on a Mac SE, so I know a thing or two about sitting and waiting for the progress bar to finish. And here's the thing -- a progress bar is supposed to tell you how far along you are in the process of completing whatever the computer is doing for you. If you're 50% complete, then the bar should be 50% full. BUT, with this Acrobat installation, I get a progress bar, I'm 50% done, 75%, 100% done, and then -- A NEW PROGRESS BAR COMES ON, And it goes through the cycle again. And then ANOTHER PROGRESS BAR! and a third and fourth, and I kid you not, I lost track. I think there were seven or eight progress bars involved in updating my software.

So observing the status of the progress bar is totally meaningless, because the user never knows how many progress bars are actually involved in the process. I've experienced this with Apple and Microsoft software as well, so this is not just an Adobe problem.

Guys -- when you write software installation sequences, give us a progress bar for the whole installation, so we actually have some idea of what's going on and what to expect. PLEASE, don't give us 16 progress bars.

thanks!