Interesting note, the author of this project is still in high school.
Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
11–20 of 187 posts
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#12I thought for a moment Microsoft had uploaded some new Windows Explorer source code and got excited... I guess that tells you how different an era we live in. It wouldn’t be a huge leap. The screenshots look nice, though. I can’t say I am really a huge fan of UWP UIs on desktop... but this looks alright.
I thought so too, given that MS has already released the source of the original File Manager:
https://github.com/microsoft/winfile
...and it compiles to a nice small and fast ~300KB executable, in contrast to their open-sourced and significantly less efficient UWP calculator:
https://github.com/microsoft/calculator
I believe the old leaked Win2k source has much of the explorer.exe source, if you're really curious.
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#13It's funny to see the gradient in the title bar, contrasting with the bland borderless-sea-of-whiteness of the rest of the UI. > FilesUwp.Package_0.5.0.0_x64.zip 54.4 MB Nearly 55MB, compressed , for something that attempts to mimic some of the functionality of the regular explorer.exe, is quite frankly ridiculous. I don't have a system to check right now, but I believe even latest Windows 10 has an explorer.exe http…
You're just talking about 'explorer.exe' being 5 mb? You're discounting the numerous DLLs which the explorer uses, or even other shared resources which are used system-wide.
And 55 MB for a native app is paltry. Even the 'Google' app on Android is 285 MB, the Gallery app of OnePlus is 70 MB.
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#14It's funny to see the gradient in the title bar, contrasting with the bland borderless-sea-of-whiteness of the rest of the UI. > FilesUwp.Package_0.5.0.0_x64.zip 54.4 MB Nearly 55MB, compressed , for something that attempts to mimic some of the functionality of the regular explorer.exe, is quite frankly ridiculous. I don't have a system to check right now, but I believe even latest Windows 10 has an explorer.exe http…
And there is no gradient on the title bar. That's just the background showing through due to transparency (Acrylic in UWP/Fluent design lingo).
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#15The only thing I've ever wanted from Explorer is... being able to see how big a directory is in the file size column.
If you open the properties of a folder, you can see how long it can take to calculate the size of a folder. This is a feature I've never really needed - what is your scenario for needing this at a glance? When I'm chasing large files that need deleting due to free space pressure I typically use something like the following https://windirstat.net/
I don't see why the size of the folder couldn't be written to the folder's metadata every time the folder contents are modified.
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#16Interesting note, the author of this project is still in high school.
Starting early is good, but I think he may have gotten sucked into the UWP hype:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19873198
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19883351
If the author is reading this, here's some advice for you: I encourage you to start learning pure Win32 and enjoy the benefits of extreme compatibility (you can create a single .exe that works on anything starting from Windows 95, depending on the exact set of features you want) as well as highly efficient native code. It's what made Microsoft and the Windows platform great in the first place, and it will continue to be the "real Windows API" that has lasted through all the other churning trends.
I started with Win16 (and before that was DOS, so not much to speak of in the way of UI), moved to Win32, and basically stayed there while ignoring all the other newer and more short-lived stuff that came and went.
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you open the properties of a folder, you can see how long it can take to calculate the size of a folder. This is a feature I've never really needed - what is your scenario for needing this at a glance? When I'm chasing large files that need deleting due to free space pressure I typically use something like the following https://windirstat.net/
I don't see why the size of the folder couldn't be written to the folder's metadata every time the folder contents are modified.
[deleted]
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#18It's funny to see the gradient in the title bar, contrasting with the bland borderless-sea-of-whiteness of the rest of the UI. > FilesUwp.Package_0.5.0.0_x64.zip 54.4 MB Nearly 55MB, compressed , for something that attempts to mimic some of the functionality of the regular explorer.exe, is quite frankly ridiculous. I don't have a system to check right now, but I believe even latest Windows 10 has an explorer.exe http…
You're just talking about 'explorer.exe' being 5 mb? You're discounting the numerous DLLs which the explorer uses, or even other shared resources which are used system-wide. And 55 MB for a native app is paltry. Even the 'Google' app on Android is 285 MB, the Gallery app of OnePlus is 70 MB.
The bundle also seems to include dependencies for multiple architectures and PDBs for debugging. Files.dll which would contain most of the application is ~18MB. And since it does not seem to be a managed dll, it has probably been AOT compiled and likely contains the original bytecode in addition to the native machine code.
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#19It's funny to see the gradient in the title bar, contrasting with the bland borderless-sea-of-whiteness of the rest of the UI. > FilesUwp.Package_0.5.0.0_x64.zip 54.4 MB Nearly 55MB, compressed , for something that attempts to mimic some of the functionality of the regular explorer.exe, is quite frankly ridiculous. I don't have a system to check right now, but I believe even latest Windows 10 has an explorer.exe http…
You're just talking about 'explorer.exe' being 5 mb? You're discounting the numerous DLLs which the explorer uses, or even other shared resources which are used system-wide. And 55 MB for a native app is paltry. Even the 'Google' app on Android is 285 MB, the Gallery app of OnePlus is 70 MB.
You're discounting the numerous DLLs which the explorer uses, or even other shared resources which are used system-wide.
I see this argument brought up in demoscene discussions ("your .exe is 4KB but it uses several GB of system libraries and device drivers!") and the rebuttal is the same: I'm assuming this UWP one itself makes use of other system DLLs too, like any other Windows application will, so the comparison is between 5MB + shared and 55MB + shared.
Even the 'Google' app on Android is 285 MB
Android is a whole other story altogether. The bloat is endemic there, and emulating that is not at all something to be proud of. Windows applications can be far more efficient, as Windows' own explorer.exe shows (and even that is probably not anywhere close to "perfection", but the difference is already enormous.)
Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be
#20It's funny to see the gradient in the title bar, contrasting with the bland borderless-sea-of-whiteness of the rest of the UI. > FilesUwp.Package_0.5.0.0_x64.zip 54.4 MB Nearly 55MB, compressed , for something that attempts to mimic some of the functionality of the regular explorer.exe, is quite frankly ridiculous. I don't have a system to check right now, but I believe even latest Windows 10 has an explorer.exe http…
Maybe he's just a kid, and we shouldn't shit on him?