CS2’s Progress Meter

DH
Posted By
Dan_Heller
Apr 28, 2005
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531
Replies
17
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Closed
With the frustrating removal of the status bar at the bottom, I no longer see a progress meter for long operations. I was able to get one for ONE occassion (highlight/shadow on a large file), where an actual window (long and narrow) popped up to show the progress and a cancel button. But I’ve never been able to generate it again after that, and for no other operations… even longer ones (time-wise). So, what’s the real story here? There’s no mention of it in the doc.

On an editorial note: if the PS team is going to redesign interface elements to help those with two monitors (ie., moving the status bar to the info palette), you’re hurting those of us with one monitor. You can’t have it both ways with a single interface design, so you’ve only succeeding in swapping one set of problems (and set of complaining users) for another. To make both camps happy, you’re eventually going to have to provide enough flexibility to allow either party to optimize the UI to fit their particular screen real estate. In the end, it would have been better to leave well enough alone until you have that dual-camp design.

Dan
<http://www.danheller.com/>

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CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 28, 2005
The progress dialog should be coming up for long operations (over 8 seconds). It has worked well in our testing.
CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 28, 2005
Nope, no option to change it. We don’t want to show the dialog for quick operations, but we do want to show it for long operations. There has to be some threshold.
(hmm, I need to check that – it looks like we dropped it to 5 seconds in CS2)

No, there is no way to get the progress bar back in the application frame (there were other problems with having it there).

Again, you should NOT have long periods without feedback.

These "changes" have been in place on the Macintosh for about 15 years now.
DH
Dan_Heller
Apr 28, 2005
These "changes" have been in place on the Macintosh for about 15 years now.

Funny you mention that– I just today purchased a G5 and will be migrating my entire workflow from Windows to Mac… is there any forum for discussing Photoshop-specific platform compatibility issues? Until you mentioned the above, I didn’t think there’d be any…

how foolish of me… 😐
dan
<http://www.danheller.com/>
RB
Robert_Barnett
Apr 28, 2005
It seems with each version of Photoshop Adobe goes and does something really stupid that really annoys a lot of users. I think the loss of the status bar is going to be the one for CS2. Shame they don’t do a bit better thinking these things through. But, then these are seemingly small things and I guess they don’t figure they will be that big a problem. Myself I hate the loss of the status bar.

Robert
C
chrisjbirchall
Apr 28, 2005
On CS I deliberately used to have the status bar disabled after I realized how much time I was wasting watching numbers instead of getting on with the business of pixel pushing!
IL
Ian_Lyons
Apr 28, 2005
But, then these are seemingly small things and I guess they don’t figure they will be that big a problem. Myself I hate the loss of the status bar.

A lot of folk didn’t like it. Not having it stuck at the bottom of the Photoshop window provides other opportunities like having direct access to the Windows desktop and Bridge still visible in the background <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?7@@.3bba1355/13>
JJ
John Joslin
Apr 28, 2005
A lot of folk didn’t like it.

Well obviously a lot of folk did like it too!

I can live with that bit of change for change’s sake, but is there a way to get rid of the new bar and its attendant, redundant scroll bar on the right? (don’t say press "F", that doesn’t do it).
DH
Dan_Heller
Apr 28, 2005
there is absolutely no merit to any argument that says, "I like it better without it," because you always had the opportunity to turn it off before. Not having it now does nothing to your experience, but sure affects the rest of us.

The rule of successive changes to the UI design for a product is:

"wait before removing old elements or behaviors until the version after the implementation of the new behavior".

In other words, you want to give users the ability to migrate more easily, and to confirm that your new idea goes over well.

dan
HM
Hank McCall
Apr 28, 2005
That is pure BS. If you don’t tell people that a feature will be gone in the next release, how do they know they are supposed to be adapting to the new system?????

wrote:
there is absolutely no merit to any argument that says, "I like it better without it," because you always had the opportunity to turn it off before. Not having it now does nothing to your experience, but sure affects the rest of us.

The rule of successive changes to the UI design for a product is:
"wait before removing old elements or behaviors until the version after the implementation of the new behavior".

In other words, you want to give users the ability to migrate more easily, and to confirm that your new idea goes over well.

dan
C
chrisjbirchall
Apr 28, 2005
To be honest I always found the Status bar about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. Because I prefer to work in Full Screen mode it was never in view when it was needed.

In CS2, however, all the Status Bar information can be viewed in one go on the Info Palette – and this can be placed anywhere on the screen to suit your way of working.

That’s got to be progress!

Chris
C
chrisjbirchall
Apr 28, 2005
Incidentally Dan, shame about having to remove the link from your posts – but those are the rules.

What I would say, however, to any photographer here who wants a treat. Go click on Dan’s name then on his Home Page link.

I used to surf the net looking for inspiration – now I just surf Dan Heller’s excellent web site.

Chris.
DH
Dan Heller
Apr 28, 2005
To be honest I always found the Status bar about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. Because I prefer to work in Full Screen mode it was never in view when it was needed.

I, too, work in fullscreen mode, as do probably most of the people who also miss the status bar. The reason it was so good is because it was TINY. But the point to this thread is only about the progress meter, which was in the status bar.

In CS2, however, all the Status Bar information can be viewed in one go on the Info Palette – and this can be placed anywhere on the screen to suit your way of working.

yeah, well, it’s too friggin’ big for the minute amount of information that I want from it. 🙂 What’s more, the image’s own window has enough for me. So that Info Palette has been demoted in usefulness. (It could be bumped up a notch in this usefulness, however, if one could resize it to the size that the status bar used to be, and then placed anywhere I like, such as where the status bar used to be.)

Again, the thread is drifting here–it’s all about the progress meter. Now, if they put the old progress meter in the new info palette, it would bump its usefulness back up again, but the complaints about its screen real estate (w.r.t. the old status bar) will be hard to defend.

dan
DH
Dan Heller
Apr 28, 2005
Incidentally Dan, shame about having to remove the link from your posts – but those are the rules.

hey, I have no problem with the rules–I just didn’t know about them. (mea culpa.)

But, thanks for the mention of my site here! I do appreciate it. :-}

dan

ps. I now have a blog, too, but now we’re really getting into thread-drift… mea culpa. again.
SB
Scott_Byer
Apr 28, 2005
I will think about alternate locations for a "permanent"/lightweight progress bar somewhere. As one of the additional lines in the Info palette might make sense.

Note that you have quite a bit of control over what extra information is in the new Info palette – you can turn all the new stuff off if you want. Just use the Options menu item on the palette flyout menu.

-Scott

wrote:

Again, the thread is drifting here–it’s all about the progress meter.
DH
Dan Heller
Apr 28, 2005
Note that you have quite a bit of control over what extra information is in the new Info palette – you can turn all the new stuff off if you want. Just use the Options menu item on the palette flyout menu.

Yes, I played with it quite a bit while I was searching for the elusive progress meter. I must say I like the new info palette quite a bit, so kudos on that one.

However, it’s still a "big" item to have on the screen if the only thing you want out of it is the "lightweight" progress meter. May I suggest putting it at the bottom "bar" on the frame for the image itself, instead. The area is already on the screen, it’s very minimal, and you’re not removing anything that’s necessary.

dan
D
dpick
Apr 30, 2005
My progress bar rarely works. I just used the reduce noise filter (seems to work very nicely, btw). It took about 15 to complete–no progress bar. To test the time, I went back a step in history and ran it again to see how long it really took to run. This time the progress bar showed up.

I liked the old progress/status bar.
C
chrisjbirchall
May 11, 2005
liked the old progress/status bar.

You can opt to have the progress bar appear for all operations, regardless of how short a time they take.

You’ll need to retrieve the ForceProgress file from the Goodies folder on the CD, under Filters>Photoshop Only. The ReadMe file tell you how to invoke it.

Chris.

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