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Windows Explorer Through the Years

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Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#111

Post by oblio »

Joeri wrote: post #38
ptidhomme wrote: post #8

Starting in Windows 8 : > The Ribbon is unspeakably messy, and unspeakably large, and as I said I am not going to attack it in detail because this is a long-running Microsoft hobby horse. Suffice to say I feel it is a usability disaster and does not belong in any program let alone Explorer, however, it has the one saving grace that it is both collapsible, and defaults to that state, so most users almost certainly nev…

I get a sense the ribbon design is a bit aspirational, with emphasis on the things they think you should use instead of what is actually used. For example, I’m sure they feel you should be using styles instead of fonts, and so the styles control takes up a lot more real estate than the font chooser.

Well, you should be using styles. It's just that most people like micromanaging document looks and can't be bothered to create new styles.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#114

Post by [deleted] »

vinw wrote: post #64
Jaruzel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Multiple Document Interface (MDI) and in some instances can be quite useful. MS have completely depreciated it now to the extent that MDI apps no longer render their window chrome properly since Windows 7.

FYI: deprecate [0] [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate

[deleted]

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#115

Post by mkl »

vbezhenar wrote: post #72
glaberficken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only learned last year (when I was still on Windows 7) that you can right-click drag (for example a file on to an email in outlook) and it will throw a pop-up where you can select "Create hyperlink here". It dropped my jaw...after decades using Windows I had never known right click and drag was even a thing!

Control+drag = copy; Shift+drag = move; Control+Shift+drag = link.

Yes, but right-click drag means clear visual confirmation of the action, the physical movements are the same for all types of operation, and you can make up your mind what to do after you've indicated where. I only use shift or control if I accidentally left-click drag.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#116

Post by forgotpwd16 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #90
vinw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: deprecate [0] [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate

FYI: depreciated [0] :) [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deprecia...

Depreciate is about monetary value, deprecate in software terminology means something to be removed, and obsolete means it has been removed. As per Cambridge and others, you're correct since they don't include the aforementioned definition. Merriam-Webster[1] and Oxford[2] for example do.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deprecate

[2]: https://www.lexico.com/definition/deprecate

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#117

Post by viewer5 »

pjc50 wrote: post #58
ygra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shift right click has always been the way to get the "advanced" context menu. Well, at least back to Windows 95. Fun fact: since the shortcut for the context menu is Shift+F10, you'll always get the extended menu since you'll always have shift pressed when the menu appears.

Did not know that! I've always used the "menu key" for keyboard access to the context menu instead.

Looks like shift+menu key does the same thing, too

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#118

Post by mkl »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
ygra wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

start uses the first quoted argument as the window title and with your example the actual argument is missing, hence you get a new console window.

Aaargh. I always forget that while UNIX strips one layer of quotes from arguments, DOS and its inheritors have no parsing and just pass the whole thing through. So you can have semantically meaningful quotes.

Speaking of weird Windows/Unix quoting complexities, the following makes a WSL equivalent of cmd's start:

  alias start="cmd.exe /c start '' ${@//&/^&}"
I don't remember where I found the details, but they're not of my invention. This may have some strange edge case failures, but works pretty well in my experience, including with spaces in filenames, but only for Windows folders, not WSL-specific ones (cmd.exe barfs, but maybe it would be possible with PowerShell).

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#119

Post by mkl »

ubercow13 wrote: post #61

My favourite advanced secret feature of Explorer is that you can sort files by multiple columns. First sort by the primary column such as file type, and then shift-click a secondary column such as date to add it as a second sort criteria.

Can't you do that by sorting by the secondary column first, then the primary? I think the sort is stable, so that works.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#120

Post by slantyyz »

cosmodisk wrote: post #94

I think the design that made sense stopped with Win XP. The following iterations just make less and less sense and I'm a win user since 3.1.

For me, the pinnacle of Windows Explorer UI was Windows 2000. I am such a fan of it that for the many years I was a Mac user, I wished that there was a Finder replacement that was more like Windows Explorer.

The change in Explorer I hated the most was when they switched the '+' in the tree view to disclosure triangles.

I still use Classic Explorer [1] on every Windows computer to try and get File Explorer to look like older Explorers as much as possible.

[1] http://classicshell.net/features/#explorer

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