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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

#41

Post by legends2k »

ploxiln wrote: post #24
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.

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)…

It's probably not OP's code itself but usage of UWP. The apps you mentioned here are all written in pure Win32 API. HWND, HANDLE, HPEN, HDC, anyone? Just pure C (or pure C++) and some functions... Those were the days!

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

#42

Post by tonyedgecombe »

MH15 wrote: post #3

This is an amazing design exercise, but the thing about Win10 that really pushes my buttons is the Control Panel/Settings conundrum. Each version it seems another feature gets added into the real settings app but still needing to open an old-themed dialog to change mouse settings of all things seems odd. It's not like mouse settings are an obscure feature. I'm not sure why a higher emphasis on cohesiveness isn't note…

My fear with all this is we will end up where we started. The same settings but with extra whitespace so you can nominally use it on a tablet.

Microsoft have never been able to show the restraint that Apple have when it comes to this stuff.

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

#43

Post by duke7553 »

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…

Thanks for addressing me with this recommendation. As you may have guessed, I'm the developer of Files UWP. I really have a great deal of respect for those who take the time to learn the guts of the Windows API which simultaneously teaches one how Windows itself works. I won't deny it. There is certainly something pretty great to learning a subsystem written under Gates himself.

Further, there have been many instances where I've grown quite tired of the limitations surrounding UWP. Just this evening, I discovered we simply can't check the maximized/minimized state of the app windows. While this limitation probably dates back to Win 8, this functionality is taken for granted by Win32 devs. Don't get me started on how slow some of the Windows.Storage APIs are compared to that of Win32.

Because of these reasons, I'll kindly admit to you guys that a file explorer application probably SHOULD be written using completely-native Windows APIs. I can't deny the UX improvements brought by Fluent Design to controls have been great, but I'm NOT blinded by my own ignorance. UWP (in it's current state) is not ready for adoption. In fact, I started work on Files last year with no real knowledge of what an API was. (My knowledge of programming concepts has come a long way since then) Come February 2019, I posted the project to Reddit with the intention of abandoning it, but I was blown away by the overwhelmingly-positive community feedback to the point where I continued work on the project. I almost feel obligated to, at the very least, maintain it.

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

#44

Post by kilpikaarna »

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…

I'd suspect the executable size has more to do with bundled libraries rather than the author having written multiple megabytes worth of if statements...

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

#45

Post by sebazzz »

MH15 wrote: post #3

This is an amazing design exercise, but the thing about Win10 that really pushes my buttons is the Control Panel/Settings conundrum. Each version it seems another feature gets added into the real settings app but still needing to open an old-themed dialog to change mouse settings of all things seems odd. It's not like mouse settings are an obscure feature. I'm not sure why a higher emphasis on cohesiveness isn't note…

The bit-by-bit migration of control panel to settings is iterative if not anything else. Else you'd need to wait years for them to migrate all things.

Still, I don't believe everything is eligible for migration. Take the network adapter TCP/IP settings, I don't a migration happening for that. I don't think UWP is suitable for such information density. And in my opinion the UWP panel is less discoverable.

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

#46

Post by kalleboo »

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/

The Mac has been able to do this since what, System 7.5 in 1995? Yeah it can take a while to calculate but on a modern SSD it's not a problem. If you don't like the performance hit it's an option that defaults to off.

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

#47

Post by adzm »

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/

Note that if you parse the MFT itself you can calculate this info for the entire drive in the time explorer can calculate it for a single folder. I know there is some overhead with the official api of course and it needs to support other filesystems but we really needed a way to iterate directories faster just to gather this kind of info. There are several disk space utilization / treesize apps and file search apps that take advantage of the speed you get by bypassing the API.

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

#48

Post by chronogram »

64738 wrote: post #35
ploxiln wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Thank you for mentioning IrfanView. Back in the day I used to have a cracked copy of LviewPro that was always one of the 1st programs to be installed whenever I started working on a new system. It was small, fast, and I could easily flip through all the image files in a directory. I stopped using LviewPro probably 8, or 10 years ago, but always wished I knew of a replacement that was so efficient. I see that IrfanVie…

Wow one of the lucky 10 000! I can understand your happiness, I think I felt the same way probably over 15 years ago when I first found it.

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

#49

Post by kristiandupont »

Explorer/Finder/File Manager is one type of app I wish someone would make a nice Electron version of. It's more or less the last piece of platform-specific software I use.

I currently switch back and forth from MacOS and Windows and I dislike what both have to offer. I used to be ok with Explorer but somewhere around Windows 8 they "improved" it in several ways that made it alien to me. I hate Finder, the fact that there is no simple way to copy the current path is just completely beyond me, and the fact that enter means rename will never make sense to me either.

I know that there are a number of cross-platform "commander" apps that I could use but though I was addicted to the original (Norton Commander), I don't much care for that paradigm anymore. Does anyone know of other good alternatives?

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

#50

Post by dfkljsdlfkj »

kristiandupont wrote: post #49

Explorer/Finder/File Manager is one type of app I wish someone would make a nice Electron version of. It's more or less the last piece of platform-specific software I use. I currently switch back and forth from MacOS and Windows and I dislike what both have to offer. I used to be ok with Explorer but somewhere around Windows 8 they "improved" it in several ways that made it alien to me. I hate Finder, the fact that t…

opt cmd c will copy the current path or selected file/dir to the clipboard

iirc

enter is rename because it came from a time when it was viewed as own self-contained app that did one thing - organized files on your profile and floppy.

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