I've noticed on Mt. Lion that there is no progress to be seen in the progress bar when loading pages. I miss this. If I hover over a link, the progress bar will show me the link info only. Sometimes I want that info, but then Mt. Lion being what it is, the link opens while I'm trying to decide whether I want to click on it or not.

Any ideas about any of this?

Thanks.

Rita

Read What's wrong with the Mountain Lion interface. Note, especially, the following:

In Mountain Lion’s default setup, I have to scroll-drag in every single window to see if there’s additional content. You can set them to be permanently visible in System Preferences, which I always do, but they’re invisible by default. A user new to the platform, though, would have to discover this fact on their own—and it’s not obvious where to go to change the setting.

Since I don't have ML, I can't tell you exactly which preference pane has the ability to change this: You'll have to find it yourself unless someone else can be more specific.

Thanks, Jon. I didn't see the answer to my problem, though.

Rita

Hi, Rita,

Speaking from Snow Leopard-land and Safari 5.x, I'm not certain if this applies to your situation, but if you go to Safari > Menu Bar > View and click on "Show Status Bar" you'll see a progress indicator at the bottom of each page as it's loading...not precisely what I think you're looking for, but something.

Hope this helps.

Edit: From the little reading I've done on the subject, I don't think the answer you're looking for exists, but somebody who's running Safari 6 may have looked and found something helpful.

Safari also has the ability to use "Extensions". Go to the Safari menu in Safari and look at "Safari Extensions…". You will see lots of stuff, but look for the following.

I use "Ultimate Status Bar" which is a free download from the above menu. It has the advantage of showing the full link, even if the original is a shortened version, plus other options.

Apple/Safari supports the use of these Extensions and they are easy to select and install.

Hi Artie: It's already set to "show status bar." It has never worked. Just shows an empty status bar unless I am hovering over a link.

Rita

Hi Ira:

Thanks. I will try that. Funny that we should have to do this, since it was incorporated before.

Rita

The text jon is referenced refers to the scroll bars on the left and/or bottom of every window in Mountain Lion NOT to Safari download progress bars. In Safari 6.0.2 the download indicator appears as a progress bar in a tiny icon at the far right end of Safari's tool bar. With a small download I notice the download finishes and the icon disappears almost before I notice it appeared. Sometimes the download is complete before the animation reaches the dock. I have searched high and low for a preference to return to the progress bar at the bottom of the window without success. I did find a reference to changing the progress bar location in Safari 3 but the notation said the feature was removed in Safari 3.1. There may be a third party extension that I have not found.

If the progress bar is important to you, you might consider changing to another browser.

• Google Chrome shows a download manager tab at the bottom of the screen,
• Camino pops up a download window with a progress bar,
• Firefox works the same way as Camino but its download manager window is much less "colorful" than Safari,
• iCab's popup download manager is text rather than graphics based and IMO is by far the most informative of the bunch,
• Lightning shows download progress textually at the top of the window frame.

Personally Safari 6's progress bar has always worked well for me, but among the others I would probably choose iCab's download manager simply because it is so informative.

Another possible alternative is Easyget Download Manager or Easyget Lite Download Manager from the App Store. Either operates independently of a browser and has the added ability to organize and store downloaded files.

Hi JoeMikeB:

I guess I didn't really mean a download. I know about that little progress bar. I just meant when loading up a website, sometimes they hangup or load slowly. I like to look at the progress bar to see if it's still making progress or I need to reload. That option isn't in Safari anymore. I am going to download ultimate status bar when their website quits being busy. I'd kind of like to stay with Safari.

Also, My question other than the progress bar was about accidentally hovering over links that then open up while I'm reading a website. It's aggravating. I want to have to click on them.

Thanks for your help.

Rita

For any who are interested, Rita has a separate thread about her (now solved) hovering/opening problem: Hovering over links

Hi Ira:

I downloaded the Ultimate Status Bar yesterday. I have it enabled and any box that could be checked, I checked. I still don't see any status stuff going on in in the lower part of my screen when a page is loading. Is there something else I need to do?

Rita

Have you turned extensions on in Safari Preferences? Is Ultimate Status Bar enabled in Safari Preferences > Extensions?

Yep!!

You may need to "Show Status Bar" in Safari. Go to the View menu in Safari and choose "Show Status Bar".

It's already set there. Thanks, anyway. Rita

I've been trying to d/l it for two days to take a look, but the dev's server isn't responding.


Based on that description, though, it doesn't do what you're looking for.

It looks like there is quite a bit of confusion about what Ultimate Status Bar does and doesn't do. It's a spiced-up replacement for Safari's Status Bar (View menu), and it only struts its stuff when you hover over a link in a page AND have Safari's version disabled (may require Quit & reload). What it adds over Safari's version includes a favicon, non-http protocol icons, non-html file size (with download links), descriptive text with URLs, and the option to customize its appearance, to mention the most important.

It does NOT function as a progress bar of page loads, file downloads or anything else incoming, although it might list the (number of) components still to be downloaded, like the Safari status bar it replaces.

Finally, and not unimportantly, it appears that Rita managed to get one of the last downloads from the ultimatestatusbar.com domain before it shut down earlier this week. That explains Artie's problem in downloading it, and may render much of the discussion about USB moot.

All that said, I'm confused about the missing progress bar in Rita's Safari under Mountain Lion. AFAIK (I don't run ML), there should be a progress bar for page loads, as shown here. So why doesn't Rita see it? Could it be turned off, or too fast to notice? I understand some users don't like the bar's flashing effect when the latter happens. In a word, whazzup?

The blue indicator which progresses across Safari's address bar, typically moving slowly at first and then finishing with a flourish, bears only the most casual relationship to the loading of page content. Specifically, it finishes its flash long before the full content of a typical web page is loaded, leaving the remaining page elements to pop into place with no barometer for the measurement of their progress.

Hence Rita's complaint: when elements still to be loaded have not yet materialized, there's no way within Safari to discern whether the process is slowed or stalled, or whether there are simply a lot of items whose serving is still underway. From a rich history of DSL problems, I've developed the habit of watching the lights on the router and modem to distinguish among these states, but that feedback is obviously limited. Those without visual access to network hardware can use the Network tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor's window to similar effect.

Artie: I went to the developers site and it doesn't work. But, I found a mirror site that does work. I just can't find it now. If I do, I'll publish the link. Unless there's some way to tell its source now that I've got it downloaded. Let me know. I've got too much history to look through at the moment.

Rita

How does one disable safari status bar? I mean, I went to "view" and "hide status bar" and quit Safari. Then reloaded. Now I just don't see the status bar. I hovered over links and there's nothing happening. I if I "show status" bar again, and hover over a link, it shows what the link is in the status bar, but it's always done that.

I guess I just don't know what to look for. I understand now that it's not going to show progress in the status bar but I see nothing, ever. I noticed when it downloaded, the default theme is "sparkles." I see nothing sparkling. I could change it, but I don't know where to look or when to see that it's doing it's job. If I can't figure this out, I'm just going to delete it.

I'm with you, Rita. Ultimate Status Bar does nothing whatsoever that I've been able to discern, whether Safari's own status bar is set to Show or Hide. Since the developer's site is inaccessible, it's not possible to see whether there's any info available there regarding compatibility with 10.8.2...

Addendum: I haven't tried a restart.

I found two mirror sites and d/l'ed from both; one d/l was older than the other, and I'm not certain that the newer one was the newest one.

I wound up installing neither on the theory that if the dev wasn't doing business, why risk a 3rd party d/l?

I found your "it shut down link" last night, and the first time I clicked on it today I saw the same thing I saw last night, but now, about 10 minutes later, I get a "504 Gateway Time-out" error.

I dunno.

I guess what we saw does mean that the site has shut down. (I've seen similar things before and not know how how to interpret them, and I'm not really sure what led you to your conclusion.)

Artie: One of those older links you downloaded might work for you since you have an older OS version. It's easy enough to delete if you don't like it. I wonder if there is another status bar utility out there. I think I'll look.

Rita

Thanks for the thought, Rita; you may very well be correct, but I'm not particularly interested in USB...only got involved as part of this discussion, so I'm not going to bother. (Under any circumstances, I just plain don't like 3rd party d/l's, because you can never be certain that they're the real deal.)

I've done some (I guess I'd call it) cursory searching, and I haven't found anything that sounds like it meets your needs...even remotely.

Oh, well... My progress bar is still blue, and I don't anticipate upgrading any time soon, so I'm OK.

With disabling the Status Bar I meant toggling off its presence in the View menu, just as you did. When it works (and I don't know with which OS X versions it's compatible) USB produces a small frame in the lower left bottom of the window. It's size is dictated by the length of the URL and the other details USB can display. Its appearance is selected by the user. But given your and Dave's reactions it doesn't appear to work in Mountain Lion.

And thanks to Dave for explaining the issue in more detail. I noticed some of that in the Youtube clip I linked to.

As to the USB developer's web site: until earlier today it linked to a 'domain available' page, hence my assumption the site had shut down. Likewise, referring download sites produced comparable errors. The USB site now shows the time-out error Artie noticed, and the referrers are as stumped as before. We'll see.

I really miss some of the stuff from my old iBook. Progress isn't all that it's cracked up to be!

Rita

Precisely why I intend to keep my MacBook until its necrotic.

LOL! I do the same with cars!! Actually, my iBook was necrotic so that's why she's a backup!!

Rita

Rita, since I previously misunderstood which progress bar you were referring to, I have been re-reading your posts, trying to figure out what is happening and what I am missing. It has occurred to me that you may not be looking in the right place for the page loading progress bar. Some time ago that migrated from the bottom of the Safari window to the URL/Address bar at the very top of the window. The background of the address bar changes from white to blue progressing from left to right as the page downloads. More often than not the progress bar will go roughly 20% of the way from left to right then flash to the far right end and disappear almost faster than my eyes can see.

Hi Joemikeb:

Yes, I know about the progress bar on top. But, sometimes it hangs up. I'll wait a few seconds and then just reload and it's fine. I just liked the numbers I used to be able to see at the bottom of the screen letting me know if it's slowly loading or has stalled. I have deleted the Ultimate Status Bar." Thanks.

Rita

Ahhh, yes, now I understand your reference.

I too miss the "27 of 41 items…" notation that used to show in the status bar. Somehow it gave a better feeling of progress than a progressive inconsistently moving blue bar.

Alas. Progress.