Progress meters of a different kind

[neogranas]

Please hear me out for just a moment.

 

I am very new to javascript/ajax, and as I understand it, ajax would be what I need for this idea I've had. If I am wrong, please proceed to beat me with the manual so that I can know where to look. What I want to do is have 3 progress meters filled with a two color gradient.

 

The first bar I want to just randomly select a value between two numbers, then select a random time to wait between two other values before regenerating the first number. Example: it would pick between 80 and 100, then pick an amount of time to wait before picking another number to display. I want that number to be the percentage to fill in this meter.

 

The second bar I want to start at a value I specify in an XML file and have it slowly degrade throughout the day starting from a certain time of day. Then I want a button I can hit to start filling it up again until that original time.

 

The third bar I want to fill at a rate that starts on one day and ends on another. This will pretty much never change, I just want to set it once then not worry about it again.

 

Where can I look or what can I look for to do this? Would it be better to use just javascript instead of ajax? Every time I do searches for ajax progress bar or meter it brings me to upload tutorials, which aren't what I want.

 

I appreciate the time it takes to read this and respond, so thank you.

 

 

[neogranas]

I had a chance to talk to some co-workers who know much more about this than I do, and they got me thinking about how long it would take to update any of the bars. It seems that the time between any increment/decrement would be far enough between than a refresh would occur more than once in almost any situation so I don't need ajax, but rather fill the meters using javascript or php-gd. Thank you anyway for the people who read this.