Up to Vista we were all used to the Progress Bar control; the thing used to mean "hey, I’m still doing something, and this is how much I still have left to do.". Of course, that didn’t work out that well. I mean, how many times have you seen an operation where the progress goes from 0% to 95% in a few seconds, and then the last 5% takes forever to finish?
Well, now in Vista we have the fancy "marquee" progress control, which looks good, but it is pretty much useless. The thing indicates it is doing something, but we still have absolutely no idea of how much it’s been accomplished and how much is left.
I’m receiving a 5Mb file through MSN Messenger, and after the file is done downloading, I got this message from OneCare (it always seems like this thing is "downloading and updating" its components):
It took 10 minutes until the thing finished its job and I was finally able to open the files. It was enough time for me to type this post, go grab some water, sit back, and watch the fancy green bar going from left to right on the marquee progress control. Argh…
Claudio Lassala's Blog 