[DUG] Animated progress "Throbber"

[Conor Boyd]

In the past I've done something along these lines (and have described it
as a throbber too!) by placing a button with a lightbulb icon (or
similar) on the form (or in my case, on a panel on a status bar) and
having a timer make it visible and invisible every half second.

The reason I used a button was so the user could click on it for more
detailed progress info.

Not a particularly nicely self-contained approach, but I never got round
to turning into a component or similar.

You could have a look at the JVCL libraries; maybe they've got
something?  We've used things like their "toast" windows to nice effect.

C.

-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz]
On Behalf Of John Bird
Sent: Wednesday, 11 February 2009 4:09 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: [DUG] Animated progress "Throbber"

Is there any Delphi equivalent of a "throbber"?   This is used when
showing 
progress when the total length if a task in progress is not known so its
useful to show something is happening. and is usually a small animated
icon.

Would be nice to have such a component to place on a foirm.

Used a lot outside of Delphi - Examples are

-IE7 when page loading - the animated rotating circle whown on a tab
header while a page is loading, and gets replaced with the sites icon
when done.
-Firefox similar
-Vista gives a progress bar with the highlight swishing along it but not
changing length of the progress bar, also the animated circle mouse
cursor.
-Older versions of IE used to have an animated flag that waved while a
page was loading - remember?

(This visual component is called a throbber in browser circles).

If I know the length then I can use a ProgressBar, but one does not
always...and the Vista progress bar only shows on Vista of course.