Display progress bar while waiting for data

[Gambin Dejan]

Thanks everybody participating in the discussion of displaying progress
bar. I am aware of the problem but just want to describe something that
is happening on my site. 

I have a set of 18 GeoTIFF ortophoto color images, each one has a size
of 80MB. I have created tileindex shapefile to increase performance in
reading the data and I have informed the users they should first have to
zoom onto desired extent on the map and activate the ortophoto layer
after that to speed up the loading. But users are just users and many of
them are trying to activate the ortophoto layer before that (while the
map is in full view) so the loading is slow.

I have put a "Loading" message but the point is the following: when I
load the image on the local network, I get the "Loading" message and I
have to wait about 30 seconds, then the image is displayed at once. On
the slow connection I also get "loading" message displayed about 30
seconds and then the map is displayed incrementally (that is ok). So my
problem is those 30 seconds (that can arise to several minutes regarding
the number of simultaneous users of course). Can I do something?

Thanks, Dejan

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed McNierney [mailto:ed at topozone.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 6:35 PM
To: Gambin Dejan; MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: RE: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Display progress bar while waiting
for data


Dejan -

I'll second Frank's scepticism here.  Most of the "Image Loading"
animations you see on mapping sites are just that - animations.  They're
standalone animated GIFs and the like which cause pixels to twinkle on
the user's screen but which have no relationship to the actual progress
of the application.  The server could burst into flames and the "Image
Loading" graphic would keep dancing.

The site Regina mentions falls into this category.  IMHO, these kinds of
graphics are primarily used to try to cover up slow map servers, and not
to give users meaningful progress feedback.

I think by far the best feedback mechanism for image load time is the
map image itself.  If you simply display the image in a format that
browsers can easily render incrementally, then the user can see the
image begin to appear and will get a good feel for how long it will take
just by watching it.  JPEG is NOT a good choice for this, but GIF and
PNG images should render properly on most browsers.

For example, look at this image:

http://www.topozone.com/images/MtMonadnockTopo.gif

Over a slow connection.  You should see the large map image load
incrementally, so you know things are working.  If the image were
smaller and in a frame (to define the final output size) it would be
relatively easy to assess how much progress is being made.

        - Ed

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
North Chelmsford, MA  01863
ed at topozone.com
(978) 251-4242 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Dejan Gambin
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 5:06 PM
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Display progress bar while waiting for
data

Hi,

Is it possible to create some kind of progress bar while waiting for
raster data to be displayed. I have some raster data in GeoTIFF format
that some users with a slow connection must wait for. I am wondering if
I can show them a progress bar indicating "estimated" time they have to
wait so they know and they can wait or cancel the process.

Does anyone have a suggestion on what is the best way to inform users?

thanks very much

dejan