Windows Explorer Through the Years
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Windows Explorer Through the Years
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Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#2I 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.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#3I 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.
That would be awesome feature.
You can copy directory path from explorer, paste it into open/save dialog and it'll navigate there. But your suggestion is much easier and intuitive to use.
Actually Explorer and open/save dialogs have some kind of recently used (or most used) directories. But they always contain some junk for me. Listing currently opened directories there could help without need to rework UI.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#4Sorry 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.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#5Related and kind of interesting, the original File Manager was open sourced and recompiled for modern Windows.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#6I 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.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#7My pet peeve with every GUI file browser I can remember using: They all try to be smart and occasionally ignore your carefully configured view settings.
I want a massive checkbox that says "Never, EVER, try to automatically determine the best viewing mode. Really. Never!"
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#8Starting 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 never even found out it existed, making this a lean, usable Explorer wrapped in a weirdly noisy border.
I always find this ribbon to be incredibly ill-designed, may it be in Explorer or in MS Office : the biggest icons I almost never use whereas the ones I use most are painfully small (font management in MS Word to cite but one).
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#9Sorry 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.
You can also shift right click the background of an explorer window to open a terminal session (powershell or cmd depending on the release I think). If you need a administrator prompt you can do that from explorer's file menu in Windows 10.
Re: Windows Explorer Through the Years
#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 Microsoft Money 2000? A desktop app with an interface akin closer to a web page than a traditional desktop GUI. Microsoft called it Inductive User Interface:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/appuistart/in...