Over the time I have played this game I have learned to respect the furnace and not allow chatter to break my concentration on smelting. I accept that to allow myself to become distracted can entail significant loss of raw material and prioritize my focus accordingly. A bunch of little progress bars on ore will not help me much as when the initial smelting finishes a new progress bar indicating the process of turning to dust will begin. If the progress bar obscures the underlaying raw material image it may not be possible to see that the ore is molten.
I am not dead set against this functionality, I just want to indicate some problems I can foresee. That is not to say the real problems with it, if any, are ones I can imagine.
