Progress estimates

Posted 1 Nov 2021 by JC

In today’s news, we have an enhancement to the user interface that I’m hoping you’ll like.

Go to the Contribute page, and enter the knitspeak for a stitch pattern. (Or go to the Edit page for one of your stitch patterns, and make a change to the knitspeak.) Click the “Go for it!” button. You’ll see a progress bar like this:

This progress bar shows an estimate of how long it’ll take to draw your stitch map, given the number of symbols in the stitch map. It’s based on historical data that I’ve been collecting over the last few weeks:

You can see that stitch maps of modest size – under 1000 symbols – are typically drawn in under 10 seconds, but that larger stitch maps can take considerably more and more time.

The key thing to remember is that the progress bar shows an estimate of how long you’ll need to wait. Some stitch maps might take less time than expected. Some stitch maps might take more, especially if the site is busy doing other things at the same time. Either way, please be patient. “Trying again” in another browser tab is just going to tax the site further, and slow it down for everyone.

As always, this UI enhancement relies on Javascript, so you won’t see it if you have Javascript disabled in your browser. (Do people still do that? Can anyone tell me, seriously?) And if you see any wonky behavior, please let me know! Despite testing these changes on a number of browsers, it’s quite possible that your browser might have a surprise in store for us.