What's going on?

Earlier this year, I commented on Ubuntu's package manager, which duplicates its status in both title bar and main window:

Recently I was helping the lovely and talented Kim Jackson migrate some files to her new laptop, and I noticed that Vista does the same thing:

Note that both title bar and window content say the same thing. But here's how it's different: Vista provides a status update, not just a label. It addresses a use-case that Peter Wood described in a comment on my Redundancy blog: "I only pay attention to [window titles] in the context of switching between various tasks."

The Vista copy dialog box bar actually provides useful status information in its title bar ... so if you see only the title — say when minimize to the Start Bar — you can find out exactly what the copy operation's ETA is.

Granted, it omits the information that the operation is a copy, but presumably if the user initiated it, they'll know that. (And it's visually too busy with tons of unnecessary decoration, but some people like that excessively ornamental crud... so it's consistent with the rest of the system.)

Contrast this to Mac OS X Leopard's copy dialog, which has a title bar that is clean, simple, and not particularly informative. The actual content is clear and easy to understand...

...but what happens when you invoke the Mac's Expose feature? The rollover title that shows up is stunningly uninformtive:

By contrast, Apple's Mail application shows you your unread and total message count in this situation. (I won't bore you with a screenshot of that.)

I'm a rabid Mac fanboy, but quite frankly, here Vista wins. When you're glancing at your active tasks, whether through fancy Expose effects or fancy Windows Flip 3D effects, you want to see what's going on.

And that's our use case. Tell the user what's going on.