Help Center

Local Navigation

BlackBerry Manuals & Help  >  Developer Documentation  >  BlackBerry UI Guidelines  >  UI Guidelines BlackBerry Smartphones - 6.0

Activity indicators and progress indicators

Activity indicators and progress indicators show users that their BlackBerry® devices are performing an action, such as searching for items or removing languages.

Use an activity indicator if you want to show that the BlackBerry® device is working and you cannot determine the duration of the action. You can add an activity indicator to any component, such as a screen, text field, or list item. You can also add text to an activity indicator to describe the action.

Figure 1. An activity indicator in a field
This screen shows an example of an activity indicator in a field.
Figure 2. An activity indicator with text
This screen shows an example of a wireless service provider therme.

Use a progress indicator if you can determine the duration of an action. Progress indicators include a label to indicate what the action is and a horizontal bar that fills from left to right as the action progresses. A percentage appears in the bar to indicate how much of the action is complete.

This screen shows an example of a wireless service provider therme.

Best practice: Implementing activity indicators and progress indicators

  • Always indicate progress when an action takes more than 2 seconds to complete.
  • Use a progress indicator when you can determine the duration of an action.
  • Use an activity indicator when you cannot determine the duration of an action.
  • Use the ActivityIndicatorView class to create activity indicators. Use the ProgressIndicatorView class to create progress indicators. For more information about creating indicators, see the API reference for the BlackBerry® Java® SDK and the BlackBerry Java Application UI Quick Reference Guide.
  • Provide useful progress information. For example, if users are downloading an application to their device, indicate the percentage of data that their BlackBerry® device has downloaded. Be as accurate as possible with the progress information.
  • Always allow users to use the End key to hide a progress indicator.

Guidelines for text

  • Use a concise, descriptive text (for example, "Loading data..." or "Building an application list...").
  • If an action is long and you want to communicate what is happening at each stage, provide text that describes each stage (for example, "Downloading..." or "Installing...").
  • Use sentence case capitalization.
  • Punctuate the text with an ellipsis (...).
Next topic: Lists and tables
Previous topic: Best practice: Implementing buttons

Was this information helpful? Send us your comments.