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Windows Explorer Through the Years

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Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#71

Post by toyg »

nfoz wrote: post #47
open-source-ux wrote: post #10

"Windows 98 was famously controversial, at least in nerd circles, for the integration of Internet Explorer into Explorer itself" How interesting to see attitudes change. Today, using a web browser and HTML/CSS/JavasScript to write your app (whether as a SaaS app or a desktop app using Electron) is one of the most popular options for creating apps. In fact, Microsoft explored this space many years ago too. Remember Mi…

> How interesting to see attitudes change. Today, using a web browser and HTML/CSS/JavasScript to write your app (whether as a SaaS or a desktop app using Electron) is one of the most popular options for creating apps. I'm not sure that's a change. The IE integration was what the MS developers wanted, against the wishes of nerd-users. Electron apps today are very popular for developers , and nerd-users constantly com…

This * 1000.

Users are not clamouring for HTML apps (and really never have - most users get annoyed by inconsistent and mutating interfaces), it's just a way for developers to save money and time. End of.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#72

Post by vbezhenar »

glaberficken wrote: post #62
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Da fck. I recently learned you can add this feature to the right click context menu via adding a registry entry. If I’d’a known shift-right click I wouldn’t make bothered.

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.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#73

Post by for_xyz »

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.

Since ribbon UI you can always add ribbon items to the quick access toolbar (right click -> add to quick access) which can be accessed by the alt + (item slot number)

I always used to add powershell and powershell (admin) from the File menu to the quick access toolbar which allows me to quickly open the powershell in the current folder via keybind (Normal ps: alt + 3, Admin ps: alt + 4)

I wish they would add new windows terminal and all user defined profiles to the file menu.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#74

Post by ubercow13 »

chinathrow wrote: post #53

As a linux user, I really wish that the Nautilus team wouldn't have changed some UI features all in recent major version changes - it makes me wish Windows Explorer from the Win 2000 area back sometimes.

I find Dolphin much better than Nautilus, it is probably the only traditional graphical file manager I have used that is better than Explorer. If you have a Gnome desktop set up it can be fiddly to integrate a KDE application with it nicely, but in my opinion it is worth it for Dolphin alone, one of the best engineered of the normal desktop Linux applications.

If you want to stick with GTK, Nemo is a fork of Nautilus just before all the features started being removed, which aims to stay more featureful like a traditional file manager. 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.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#75

Post by usrusr »

LandR wrote: post #33
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.

Also if you aren't on hte mouse, CTRL+L in the folder jumps the cursor to the address bar.

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.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#76

Post by boomlinde »

open-source-ux wrote: post #10

"Windows 98 was famously controversial, at least in nerd circles, for the integration of Internet Explorer into Explorer itself" How interesting to see attitudes change. Today, using a web browser and HTML/CSS/JavasScript to write your app (whether as a SaaS app or a desktop app using Electron) is one of the most popular options for creating apps. In fact, Microsoft explored this space many years ago too. Remember Mi…

> is one of the most popular options for creating apps.

...and still one of the less popular options for using an app

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#77

Post by magicalhippo »

LandR wrote: post #33
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.

Also if you aren't on hte mouse, CTRL+L in the folder jumps the cursor to the address bar.

As does ALT+D, as with browsers.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#78

Post by narag »

signal11 wrote: post #27

This article would be even better if it showed the evolution of Mac OS's Finder through the years. The two undoubtedly influenced each other (possibly with one side being influenced more than the other). For instance, I believe the 'duality' of Explorer views (one without tree views, one with) was a response to the success of the Mac Finder -- it was intended to present a simple UI for managing files. The "Explore" m…

...such as not understanding how folders could exist inside of other folders

I find this bit apalling. Some users were confused by that. So what? Do you take away the concept of nesting directories altogether because beginners are confused? They didn't, but we've being suffering a sneaky war on treeview for twenty five years. Every version it's more difficult to tweak the file explorer back to 95, losing some features forever. Real state is consumed by ribbons, quick access, libraries, all kind of stuff that's hard to delete if at all possible.

Last annoyance (it's also the shell, but not exactly the FM) is the taskbar hover previews. If you make the mistake to let the mouse over some app icon in the taskbar, a pop-up window appears over your current window showing a preview of the iconized application. There used to be a hack to disable that crap, setting a high delay for the hover. They've removed that with an automated update.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#79

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

pjc50 wrote: post #6
wronex wrote: post #2

I wish Windows Save/Open dialogues would have links to already open Explorer windows (much like the links to Documents.) Rationale: Project are often contained in a single root folder. I often start by opening this folder in Explorer. Some programs can be started by double clicking files. Others cannot. Saving new files always requires interacting with the save dialog and thus browsing to the project folder again.

I'm reminded of the Acorn Archimedes: instead of a save dialog, saving produced a tiny "explorer" window containing the file, which you were expected to drag-and-drop to its save location.

RiscOS had some other interesting features, such as all menus being context menus. RoxOS was a short-lived experiment in bringing some RiscOS concepts to Linux, including AppDirs, only having context menus, and even the drag-to-save functionality.

Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years

#80

Post by Sharlin »

p4bl0 wrote: post #55

It's so weird, I can't help but feel nostalgic when I see Windows XP screenshots. It seems I really like it's aesthetic. I'm quite sure it wasn't the case at the time.

Windows 95 does it for me. I still remember how advanced it looked like compared to 3.1! The XP default theme on the other hand still feels like a fairly unsuccessful and in some way infantilizing attempt at eyecandy. Around here at least it was commonly known as the ”Teletubbies” theme.
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