[Stratoscope]

The case that annoys me to no end is when Windows is installing an update that requires a reboot, and it puts up a message like this:

You're 90% there

NO, you blithering idiot, I am not 90% there, you are 90% there. All I am doing is waiting for you.

You could have said:

We're 90% there

And then we would both be happy.

I even took the time to submit feedback to Microsoft on this (and much more politely than I stated it here).

Who wants to guess if my feedback was ever acted on?

[TheRoque]

Anyways, this message is just feel-good bullshit UI/UX design. I prefer to have just "Loading: 90%" and that's it.

[Stratoscope]

I agree completely.

Another pet peeve is when a "percent done" message like this rounds to the nearest percent. So once it is more than 99.5% done, it says "100% done". But obviously it's not 100% done, it's still sitting there waiting to finish!

Folks, if you are ever tasked with coding an "nn% done" message, please floor the percentage instead of rounding it.

[pelletier]

Agree. Though at some point I also added a round up when percentage was strictly between 0% and 1%. In my case it seemed like users believed more easily that the program was “broken” if it took a while at 0% rather than 1%.

[PaulKeeble]

The amount of these bars that get to 99% and that in practice is the half way point is infuriating.

Surely at this point we understand the difference as programmers between the amount of bytes we need to change verses the number of files and the enormous performance difference of updating small files and why any measure needs to blend both to be at least a bit more accurate. Or if its more different types of work a much better split of the bar is necessary.

[eloisant]

To be honest there was a short period where it felt fresh and cool when UI started to talk casually instead of the cold factual language.

Now the novelty has wore off and we should go back to those boring computer messages.

[li2uR3ce]

I'd be happier if they stopped using percentages. When percentage points don't consume close to an equal amount of time, don't use them. It's just complete nonsense at that point. It doesn't give the user any useful information just false hope that it might finish soon.

Of course if Windows update wasn't so horrible maybe it wouldn't matter as much.