new spinner is terrible UX #5340
Description
The rule of silence, as it's usually stated, is that "if a program has nothing surprising to say, is should say nothing at all"
Looking at this the reverse way, if something surprising HAS happened, then you must inform the user
A progress bar is nice, because it gives the user some idea about how long they will be waiting for, even log output can work in this way... even non-programmers learn to recognize patterns in the log output at boot, or the sound that the modem makes when it's about to successfully connect)
But the only thing that a steady spinner communicates is that the computer is still operating... And worse, it appears to be trying to communicate, but the movements mean nothing.
Really a spinner is the UX equivalent to when you are on hold, and you get hold music plus a message with "thank you for waiting, you are a valued customer".
An empty platitude, that instead of making you feel reassured, actually makes you feel more ignored.
A spinner that does not mean anything is worse than no output at all.
What would be acceptable:
If the spinner only moved when something actually happened (say, if it moved when ever the old log would have output a line) then, it's much more reassuring to the user - if it changes slowly - it must be waiting - if it changes fast, then the network is good right now...