The expressive progress bar can replace our traditional spinner to feel faster during periods of longer loading. To portray responsive and quicker loads, the expressive loader's design uses visual momentum to indicate progression across refreshing, page loading and user actions.

This pattern consists of an animated progress bar in various colors and an optional set of messages that are cycled into view. These messages render in an element with role="status" , which announces new content to assistive technology. The live examples that follow use aria-live="off" to prevent the status element from proactively announcing new content. This is only for demo purposes, so that this documentation page does not overwhelm the viewer with example status updates. The aria-live override should not be included in implementations of this pattern.

The expressive progress bar also renders different experiences depending on the prefers-reduced-motion media query. Toggle your reduced motion settings to view examples with the default behavior and reduced motion behavior.

Default Expressive Progress Bar

The base expressive loader consists of a progressbar with 12 lines of varying widths. Each line has a width of 10% - 40% of its container, with each set of four lines adding up to 100% width. You can use JavaScript to randomly generate the line widths, though it's not required.

In the default behavior, lines scale up from 0% to their defined width and move horizontally across the screen. When the user prefers reduced motion, the lines still animate. However, instead of growing from 0% to their defined width, they stay a fixed size and scroll more slowly across the screen.

Expressive Progress Bar with Single Message

If there is only one message, add the progress-bar-expressive__message--in class to its status element to animate it in.

Expressive Progress Bar with Multiple Messages

The following examples demonstrate cycling through messages using JavaScript. Note that JavaScript is not bundled with Skin, so you will need to write your own js implementation of this pattern. We have outlined the steps below so you can recreate them in your JavaScript framework of choice.

Default behavior

To cycle a message into view in the default mode:

1. Animate in the message:
   1. Put the message content in the aria-hidden element with class progress-bar-expressive__message . This element is used just for the visual message animation; it is not read to screen readers.
   2. Add the progress-bar-expressive__message--in class to animate that message into view.
2. After the message animates in:
   1. Put the message content in the status element with class progress-bar-expressive__message . This will read the message aloud to screen reader users.
   2. Remove the progress-bar-expressive__message--in class from the aria-hidden element.
3. After a fixed amount of time, add the expressive_loader__message--out class to the current message to animate it out of view. This can happen concurrently with the next message animating in.

Reduced motion behavior

When @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) , there is no transition state between messages, so the aria-hidden message is not needed. To fade in the first message, add the progress-bar-expressive__message--initial class to the status element. For all subsequent messages, remove the progress-bar-expressive__message--initial class and simply update the content in the status element.

Medium text

By default, the expressive progress bar displays with large text. For smaller text, apply the progress-bar-expressive--medium class to the message container.