#1,028 – ProgressBar Basics

You’ll often want to let a user know that something is happening in the background in your application.  For example, you might be processing some records or calculating a result.

You could use a simple busy indicator to show that something is happening.  But you may also want to show how much of the operation is complete, giving the user a sense of how much work remains and how fast the work is being done.

To show progress in this way, you can use a ProgressBar control.  The ProgressBar has a range, represented by its Minimum and Maximum values and a current Value falling within that range.  You typically update the Value periodically, so that it increases from Minimum to Maximum as the work progresses.

In the example below, we’ve set the Value to 75, where Minimum and Maximum are 0 and 100, respectively.  The Value is represented by the shaded green bar.