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ABOUT PROGRESS BARS IN GENERAL:
It's common for a progress bar to be used when software is being installed, files are being downloaded, some intensive computations are occurring and similar situations. 
Some progress bars work well, others don't. In a lot of cases it would have been better not to use one.
It's risible when a task commences and the progress bar indicates that there are, let's say, 12 minutes remaining yet the job completes in a minute or two. What's the point of showing progress in a highly inaccurate, misleading and pseudo-scientific way?
A similar criticism is valid when the progress bar rushes to 99 percent or worse still 100 percent completion then sits there while the final stage of the job take minutes more to finish.
Or how about a progress bar just below, which is sitting at about 80 percent completion while the accompanying text description claims that there are zero seconds remaining!
To paraphrase William Shatner: Is that weird, or what?
The worst aspect of this is that you tend to worry about this bizarre behavior. You're left in the dark about what's happening and are unsure whether something has gone wrong with the job itself or whether it's only the progress display that's out of kilter. You may even consider aborting the whole job, which would be a wrong decision in most such cases.
It's poor practice by software vendors, yet it still happens. Their application designers, coders, testers -- and Quality Assurance (if they have any) - keep churning such junk out.
I'm sure you know what I'm getting at.
But for my latest find about progress bars, PLEASE READ ON ...
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THE DECEPTIVE PROGRESS BAR:
While browsing the New Scientist web site the other day I came across this short video demonstration of progress bar trickery at New Scientist
You'll find more about this at the research pages of Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University, Faster Progress Bars: Manipulating Perceived Duration with Visual Augmentations and there's also a research paper you can download for an in-depth explanation.
Isn't it fascinating how easily our vision processes can operate to trick us.
To understand a different aspect of how our optical processes operate, I strongly recommend that you view the Magic Lab segment of the 06 May 2010 episode of the ABC Catalyst Science TV show.
You can read the full Magic Lab transcript here. Watch the video online, or download it in WMV or MP4 versions.
This is prestidigitation unveiled at last!
The Magic Lab 
episode features neurologists in the USA finding out exactly what's going on in our brain when we are deceived by a magician's trick.
In the Catalyst video, presenter Dr Jonica Newby advises 'Well I hope you've got your eyes peeled and your wits about you, because what you're about to see will change the way you view the world.'
Look out for things like Grift sense (at about 1min 20sec); the Laboratory of Illusions (at 2min 38sec); everything is an illusion (at about 2 min 50sec); and visual processing jumps, or saccades (at about 3min 18sec).
See what I mean?
Other related episodes of Catalyst are also fascinating, such as False Memories (18 March 2010) which asks how much you can trust your own memories.
Here's the link to the full ABC Catalyst program story archive where you'll find much more to sate your appetite for science insights.
