Discussion on:

Windows 8: New File Explorer features

I know we still get complaints about the Ribbon interface, but I have to agree with Greg - complaining about it is not very productive. Just by using it, I have reached a point where the Ribbon is as comfortable as the menu ever was.

What about you? Will you relent and embrace the Ribbon?

The Ribbon Gooey is obsolete.
It was obviously designed with a 4:3 CRT monitor, or a Portrait oriented phone monitor. On a "widescreen" 16:9 LCD the ribbon WASTES TOO MUCH of MY (I paid for it, NOT m$!) vertical screen space. I would rather be able to select and see 3 more file names than have to look at the ribbon (yes I know it can be minimized ... ).

Such as replace the old task pane with the ribbon, put the ribbon tabs on the left or right side of it.

In Office 2003, they had sidebars despite the fact that most people had 4:3 monitors (wasted valuable horizontal real estate).
Once a lot of people had swapped to 16:9 monitors, they introduced the "Ribbon" in Office 2007 (wasted valuable vertical real estate).

As for minimising the "Ribbon", how is it any better than the menu system, if it is minimised?

While I am typing the bulk of the content, I'll hide the bar. But when it's time for decoration and formatting, I bring the bar back.

Right-click it and 'Minimize the Ribbon'.

When it's minimized just clicking a tab heading only brings the ribbon back for one use. You can minimize or bring back the ribbon by double clicking on the tab names too...

This is by far the most important thing about the fat, fatuous, space-wasting ribbon.

Its mostly adding features that already existed, but were hidden in some way. Either by registry, or by having to do dumb things like right clicking a file while holding shift.


Have they fixed the 15 file limit? Where you can only open 15 files at a time, if you try 16 or more it just opens the first file selected and no more? I liked the old way better where it just warned you that you were doing something crazy.

When I was first exposed to the ribbon on other Microsoft software I immediately hated it. However, once you navigate it a few times, finding what you are looking for is much easier than rummaging through menu after menu.

Why didn't you just use toolbars instead of menus?
I had ALL of my most frequently used commands on 2 toolbars in Word and Excel (plus a bunch of infrequently used ones - just to use up the surplus space).

I don't think the ribbon is a great fit in Word because there is too many options.
But in file explorer, its a great idea. Have a home and task sensitive menu always up front, and other menus for networking and stuff. How about a GUI front end to robocopy?

That would be excellent.

The obligatory off-topic Linux post.

For some reason, the File Explorer Preview pane doesn't work on JPEG files . It seems to work fine with other file types.

Any idea as to why it won't work on those files?

maybe you should google it.
You could try disabling the preview pane, closing Explorer, opening Explorer and re-enabling the preview pane.

I tried all of those. I'll try Google again. When I did the first time, there weren't many hits.

Thanks for your help.

This tech welcomed the file explorer ribbon with great excitement. When I first heard about it, I was a little skeptical, but when I saw screenshots of it and actually used it in demos; well it wasn't long until I liked it.

I've pinned the file explorer to the task bar and when right clicking on it you see the folders you go to frequently.

One of my bigger pet peeves is that Map Network Drive is now MUCH harder to access, and I need that command several times per day. It used to be readily accessible in the Tools menu regardless of whether the current focus was a file, folder, drive, My Computer, etc. But now in Windows 8 the only way to access Map Network Drive is to select My Computer. THEN it appears in the ribbon. Grrr.

Something like
net use J: /d /y
Net use J: %1

To get to your sendto options, in the run command type "shell:sendto" without quotes.

And this is an improvement??? Click tools, click map network drive, bingo. MSFT not only has a hard time getting things right, they have a hard time knowing when things are, in fact, right. Hence the continual, space wasting, MS Mess.

It's not really necessary for users to have quick access to that function.
Us IT people use DOS anyways for such admin tasks.
If you want, I can write a quick app that you can add to the right click menu of folders that will map the drive.

when clicking on tagged folder it dies with a c++ run time error

I don't see many new features here. It's all stuff we've had for years re-arranged. Once again and article that doesn't match the title.

They have finally been made visible. That's new.

Functions that are available in a menu or dialog box are not "hidden". They are the usual place you find things in an application.

Copy to and move to were registry only before.
Up button was simply hidden entirely, but still existed.
Copy path was a shift + right click only.

I hadn't picked up on the couple of new things. I got frustrated after the first few new things not being new!

These days I look for articles that go beyond the obvious or the easily discovered. I get bored with the same articles every time we get a new OS. Where is the content that assumes I've read every article posted in the last 15 years? That assumes I've been into every dialog and advanced button and want to go to the next level.

/rant

Managing files on an operating system has become a power user tasks. A good chunk of casual users have no clue how files work.

I just spoke with a women who is convinced she has "VLC" file and "windows files" to differentiate different movies. I tried to tell her that those are the programs the operating system is set to use for that file type, but the concept of a file type was completely lost on her.
She got a virus yesterday, blamed it on file sharing to her TV set to play movies. Apparently she used windows media player to file share her movies to another device.
It couldn't possibly be all the torrents she downloads. Also AVG failed her utterly. The virus actually deleted AVG.

I think we are going back to a time when applications opened files. Not files opening applications. I don't look forward to making that step backwards but users have gotten dumber over the years.

It's partly that the capabilities of applications aren't ramping up as fast as they were 15 years ago. People seem to think we've reached some sort of plateau where we don't want more functionality or capacity. Seems pretty short-sighted to me.

I look forward to new paradigms and concepts like we use to see in the eighties and nineties. When OO was new and shiny, when a new OS meant a new slew of functions to learn and apply,...

I must be getting old!

(NT)

You may get to this later, but I love the new progress screen when you copy files. To see it at its best, select several large files and copy them somewhere. You'll see a window that shows you a histogram of the speed during the copy as well as progress details. It's great!

I was a bit skeptical at first about Win 8, but I'm a total supporter now. But you have to use it a while to love it. Of course, newbies won't know anything different, so they'll have to like it immediately.

Off topic: I also tried to defrag a disc and discovered that Win 8 seems to keep them perpetually defragged. Zero fragmentation whenever you check it. Who knew?