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Windows Explorer Through the Years

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Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#171

Post by badsectoracula »

omegabravo wrote: post #145
badsectoracula wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not see how it is confusing (to someone who is familiar with computers - i can see how some people who aren't used to computers might be confused by the maximization state). It is very useful in several types of applications, like image editors where you want to have multiple images open while having docked toolbars/controls, avoiding a waste of screen space and a clean background. This way you can have, e.g. th…

MDI's don't play well with multiple screens. While they have some good applications as you suggest, such as image editing - Spreadsheets and Word Processing were not great with MDI. The shared context such as pallets don't apply for documents.

While i think i'll agree about word processing, assuming there is a split view option, i'm not sure about spreadsheets since you often use those as tables and you may want to have multiple tables visible at the same time.

About multiple screens you are right but a tabbed interface doesn't work with multiple screens either (while having all the other issues i mentioned) and having multiple toplevel windows means you get unnecessary duplication (and hence waste of screen space) of UI for each toplevel window, you have the window switcher (taskbar and alt+tab) "polluted" for each document view, etc which can be very annoying.

And really there is no rule against having multiple MDI host windows (outside of framework limitations - due to LCL inheriting the API from Delphi, the API assumes a single MDI form with multiple MDI clients, but the pure Win32 API doesn't have that limitation nor does Qt's own MDI implementation AFAIK) so you could simply have one of those per screen. Some tabbed interface programs do that (e.g. i think you can open multiple windows in Eclipse).

Though TBH personally i never use multiple screens so i don't know about that.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#172

Post by RMPR »

MayeulC wrote: post #135
RMPR wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's also a little bit more performant than Nautilus recently too I think, but both are still slow compared to eg. Thunar or Dolphin. Laughing in Midnight commander

Ranger is pretty nice to work with as far as TUIs are concerned -- bulk rename, N-split panes, tabs, image previews... it does a lot, and the default view is surprisingly usable to look for a file. The only thing I miss with it is a "goto" shortcut, à la vim sneak. Ironically, Dolphin or Explorer go to a file when you start typing its name. Don't get me started on GNOME searching files.

Seems like ranger-autojump[0] is what you're looking for

0: https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#173

Post by vbezhenar »

oblio wrote: post #99
AnonC wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Explorer has been so slow that I actively avoid using it and use the command prompt instead. Even on an SSD, opening a folder sometimes takes several seconds while Explorer scans that folder with a progress bar on the address bar (and does I-don’t-know-what in the background). I see this happening for downloads and many other folders. I use Keypirinha , Everything , and other tools to get work done.

In many of those cases it's shell extensions installed by other apps that make Explorer slow. I forgot how you can check that, but you can.

Still it's sign of bad design IMO. Proper design would show menu immediately with some indication that some items are still loading, while running shell extension callbacks in background. But probably that's too fundamental to change at this moment. I remember entire Windows shell freezing because of similar things back in Windows XP. At least now different shell parts don't freeze all at once.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#174

Post by oblio »

vbezhenar wrote: post #173
oblio wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many of those cases it's shell extensions installed by other apps that make Explorer slow. I forgot how you can check that, but you can.

Still it's sign of bad design IMO. Proper design would show menu immediately with some indication that some items are still loading, while running shell extension callbacks in background. But probably that's too fundamental to change at this moment. I remember entire Windows shell freezing because of similar things back in Windows XP. At least now different shell parts don't freeze all at once.

Yeah, and but there are SO many plugin systems designed decades after Explorer that do the same thing. Hindsight is 20/20.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#175

Post by 6c696e7578 »

ubercow13 wrote: post #63
6c696e7578 wrote: post #37

Still not as good as Thunar. Or XTree Gold/ZTree

I like Thunar, but what particular features of Thunar are better?

For me, it's the lack of bloat. I just want to see a directory, I don't need the overhead that explorer.exe requires.

File browsing is all that's needed. What struck me as horrid in the 90s was just how much bloat there was which really pushed up the system requirements. Quite a few times I'd drop out of Windows and just do what I needed in xtree gold. Not because of a feature that it had, but because I could do it quicker. It had a hex viewer though which was nice.

I remember browsing through word docs in hex and spotting some system info that was embedded in the saved documents. Those were the days.

Thunar seems to present directories in a way that makes better use of screen space somehow, it doesn't seem to waste space quite so much. I can't really explain it very well, but it seems to get more information in less space. Feels faster too. Maybe just usablity.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#176

Post by thunderbong »

vbezhenar wrote: post #4

Sorry for offtopic, but I'd like to share a tip I can't imagine living without. You can type cmd in explorer address bar and it'll open cmd in that directory (probably works with any other program in your %PATH%). Also you can type `explorer .` in cmd to open explorer in the current directory.

Another tip -

From the taskbar, you can middle-click on any preview window that pops up to close that window.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#177

Post by efreak »

matsemann wrote: post #97
usrusr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god they finally copied this behavior from web browsers. I had a machine trapped on a Windows 8 until recently and lack of ctrl+l was infuriating! If you are "one of the 10000" about this today, don't beat yourself up about this, explorer's ctrl+l hasn't been around very long.

I think it used to be F4 or F6 or something for Explorer. I also used to use F6 in firefox, took some time re-learning Ctrl+L when that changed. (Edit: F6 still works, but it cycles elements (one which is the address bar) so ctrl+l is better)

Alt-D. I have this shortcut so well ingrained in my head that duckduckgo is nearly broken for me. They have a single shortcut alt+d that searches for results from the same domain. This is enabled by default, so if you use ddg as your default, it can't be disabled for private browsing mode (I use private browsing mode to avoid opening a full browser session with extensions and saved tabs/windows).

Anyone who captures keyboard shortcuts in the browser using function keys like Ctrl/alt (outside of applications like games, rich text entry, and software like Google apps) needs to rethink the way their website works. This includes squarespace(?) intercepting ESC, and websites that do server-side searching. Worse yet, when I press Ctrl+f, I want to search the current page for a word, not search your website. (I saw this recently, and it was only made worse because you couldn't actually dismiss the search overlay without reloading the page)

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#178

Post by efreak »

Lammy wrote: post #154
Arainach wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the Ribbon's contextual options perfect. When I'm at the root of My Computer, it's useful to see "Map Network Drive". When I'm in any other location, I don't care about that, so it's gone. When I click on a ZIP file it's useful to see options for extraction, etc. The Ribbon is far more useful for new users. It's true that if you memorized the Excel 97 menu layout you may not find things exactly where they were…

Maybe people will like the Ribbon more if reminded that it replaced an MSIE-powered sidebar.

The ribbon replaced menus. These menus no longer exist. The sidebars also no longer exist, but they didn't have as much functionality as the menus did.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#179

Post by efreak »

WorldMaker wrote: post #164
compressedgas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea and wrote a longer comment. But I must object to your two universal statements as they are without further qualification I find them false. It is possible to start any program via a file association even if it does nothing with the file that the action was activated on. Saving a new file only requires the file chooser if the application was started first. If the file is created in Explorer via the New…

It's too bad Templates got flooded with junk back in the Windows 95 days and so people stopped using and Developers stopped creating Templates. OS/2's heartier version of Templates, I recall being extremely useful. Windows' Templates seem derelict and forgotten ruins of the ancients in Windows today.

Isn't a template just an empty document/file/archive stored in a specific folder somewhere? That doesn't require and special technical knowledge or anything, just save an empty file there.

I have a dozen or so software shortcuts (notepad++, cmd, etc) in the SendTo folder, which works similarly.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#180

Post by efreak »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #131
grandchild wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there was Active Desktop. I remember setting an HTML file as desktop wallpaper, so I could have an animated wallpaper. :) (Why I wanted my wallpaper to visually distract me at every step is beyond me today, but I had fun.)

I was using it to read RSS, show some network info such as external IP and have a text field which could be used as a notepad. It was superseded by the arguably better designed, but more resource intensive, gadget system.

Which was then removed for...reasons. Of course. Why would you want to have little bits of software that could run on your desktop? You know, like sticky notes, a larger clock, weather that doesn't require opening more software/website...
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