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Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

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Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#21

Post by ComputerGuru »

Causality1 wrote: post #15
potentialverand wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

Because it's recursive. It means a file nested a few hundred folders down needs to update each and every parent. And what about hard linked files? Directory junction points? Drives mounted as folders? It would be insane to think the performance would be acceptable.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#24

Post by ploxiln »

kumarharsh wrote: post #13
userbinator wrote: post #8

It'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.

Your standards are unfortunately warped by modern trends. Almost all popular apps are hugely bloated because the developers just don't care, the focus is on UI re-design and feature churn and the illusion of ease of development. Some counter examples (compressed installer size for convenience):

7-zip for 64-bit windows: 1.4 MiB

Winamp 5.8: 7.8 MiB

mpc-hc: 13.5 MiB (open source media player with many built-in codecs)

irfan-view: 3.4 MiB (image viewer/utility)

uTorrent: 2.3 MiB

Sysinternals Process Monitor: 1 MiB

For a truly native application, which doesn't pack a huge run-time or dependency tree, that's the expected size range. Now, it's true, it seems no one does that anymore ...

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#25

Post by jstewartmobile »

userbinator wrote: post #16
EpicBlackCrayon wrote: post #11

Interesting 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 th…

I second this, and also recommend using Cygwin/gcc to build it with. Then you can bypass most Windows horseshit altogether, and maybe just run it on a real operating system under Wine.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#26

Post by jmgao »

Causality1 wrote: post #15
potentialverand wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

Because if you do that, you have to walk up the entire directory tree on every file operation.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#27

Post by userbinator »

potentialverand wrote: post #10
DiabloD3 wrote: post #2

The 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/

you can see how long it can take to calculate the size of a folder

On older Windows (95, 98, XP) I've never had it take an unacceptably long time, and that was with a regular HDD. With an SSD and the large file caches which are possible with today's machines with lots of RAM, it should be even faster.

Besides, it's not as if the operation needs to be synchronous; the sizes can be calculated and displayed when they're ready. Having an option to show them would be useful, and those who don't need it/don't like the extra disk activity could leave it off.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#28

Post by jchw »

userbinator wrote: post #12
jchw wrote: post #6

I 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.

As awesome as the Win2k source leak probably is from an educational standpoint, I don’t want to taint myself with illegal source code. I hope they eventually decide to open source more things, even if it was just older things.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#29

Post by comex »

userbinator wrote: post #19
kumarharsh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

It's not just a matter of using random system functionality; I think Explorer uses the same UI code as Open/Save dialogs, in which case the UI itself necessarily lives in system DLLs. (But I'm a novice when it comes to Windows, so I could be wrong.)

That said, the bloat is real.

Re: Files UWP: An enthusiast’s take on what Windows File Explorer explorer should be

#30

Post by vocatus_gate »

userbinator wrote: post #16
EpicBlackCrayon wrote: post #11

Interesting 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 th…

This is why I wrote the Tron project (https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript) in batch. It's a huge pain, but batch ALWAYS works and doesn't change, unlike PowerShell v1/2/3/etc. More work, but works on everything from XP to 10 v.whatever.
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