10 ms·

Windows Explorer Through the Years

186 points by kleff 6y ago

wronex 6y ago
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.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  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.
- pjc50 6y ago
  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.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    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.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      ROX-Filer is still my favorite file manager for lightweight desktops today.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  This is something MacOS has over Windows. Dragging a folder from Finder into the safe file dialogue opens that folder in the dialogue. You can also drag a search result from Spotlight in to the save file dialogue. Also works with the open file dialogue.
  - throw67642 6y ago
    In Windows, you can just copy the file path from Explorer and paste it into the save file dialog.
    - galad87 6y ago
      On macOS too, you can press cmd-shift-g and paste the path.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      Yep, I’m aware of that. MacBook touchpad right under the keyboard makes drag n drop feel like a superior method. For context, I have a fairly extensive AutoHotKey script and a 22 button Razer Naga configured to automate repetitive tasks on my Windows 10 work PC, and Windows 10 has proven itself to be super stable and robust at work and home, so I’m by no means a bias MacOS fan or whatever, and if I’m honest I really do prefer Windows 10... and my 2013 MBPr died the other day, and there’s not much chance of me buying another MacBook any time soon because they’re over priced and lack ports. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, there’s some things MacOS does that are great UI design....
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    That works with GTK and Qt file dialogs on Linux too
- edwinyzh 6y ago
  I second your rationale because I always do that like you. And the good news is that, you can achieve that with Listary. I'm using an old version of it due to few years ago I found that new versions do perform as fast as the old ones.
  - wronex 6y ago
    Thanks for the tip! Will give it a try.
- compressedgas 6y ago
  I like the idea and wrote a longer comment. But I must object to your two universal statements as they are without further qualification I find them false. It is possible to start any program via a file association even if it does nothing with the file that the action was activated on. Saving a new file only requires the file chooser if the application was started first. If the file is created in Explorer via the New ... Templates and then opened the use of the file chooser can be avoided.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    It's too bad Templates got flooded with junk back in the Windows 95 days and so people stopped using and Developers stopped creating Templates. OS/2's heartier version of Templates, I recall being extremely useful. Windows' Templates seem derelict and forgotten ruins of the ancients in Windows today.
    - efreak 6y ago
      Isn't a template just an empty document/file/archive stored in a specific folder somewhere? That doesn't require and special technical knowledge or anything, just save an empty file there. I have a dozen or so software shortcuts (notepad++, cmd, etc) in the SendTo folder, which works similarly.
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        The issue is that it is a small tragedy of the commons. The more apps put templates in the Templates folder the longer that context menu gets and the harder it is use. Context menus have never been a great place for lists of options that might grow unbounded over time. In the early years of Windows 9x you could directly watch that: almost every application installed a Template because it was a new thing to do and Windows encouraged it, then users started complaining they had too many items in that menu and it was too slow and they stopped using it (or never bothered learning it in the first place), then all of the applications stopped installing templates. (The SendTo folder had a similar wave of too many then too few applications installing to it. I feel like every application that really made sense on the context menu seem to have moved to direct context menu entries in the main context menu rather than SendTo.)
- gravislizard 6y ago
  This feature is actually implemented in OS/2, which was a Microsoft project at one point. It came so close to reaching windows, and would have made the system common dialogs far more powerful.
vbezhenar 6y ago
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.
- gjhr 6y ago
  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.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  How did you happen upon this tidbit? I imagine going through an actual book and doing all the exercises, or something similar like a course for Windows or whatever might cover it?
  - Kuinox 6y ago
    Not the one you asked but i'll answer: I discovered it myself: Most of the program like this one take a path to know where it should open. I was searching how to open vscode is current folder ("code .") and figured you could do with a bunch of other tools, like cmd, gitextensions, powershell, explorer...
- cstuder 6y ago
  Another tip: Shift-Right-Click a file in Explorer and "Copy as path" will appear in the context menu. Puts the full file path in your clipboard.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    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.
accrual 6y ago
Related and kind of interesting, the original File Manager was open sourced and recompiled for modern Windows. https://github.com/microsoft/winfile https://github.com/microsoft/winfile
- timvdalen 6y ago
  Floating windows in floating windows, I can't believe I forgot that was ever a thing.
  - Jaruzel 6y ago
    It's called Multiple Document Interface (MDI) and in some instances can be quite useful. MS have completely depreciated it now to the extent that MDI apps no longer render their window chrome properly since Windows 7.
    - vinw 6y ago
      FYI: deprecate [0] [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate
      - Jaruzel 6y ago
        FYI: depreciated [0] :) [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/depreciated https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deprecia...
        bmn__ 6y ago
        Yes, that's the wrong word. Please note the difference in usage.
        Jaruzel 6y ago
        No, I used it correctly for what I was saying. Don't put words in my mouth please. MDI has not been removed. It's been DEPRECIATED as in it's still there and it still works (kinda) but MS no longer see value in it's function. My terminology for what I was saying was correct. This sub-thread is a classic example of HN pedantry. Down vote me into oblivion if it makes you happy. /sigh
frou_dh 6y ago
My 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!"
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  The best viewing mode is detailed. Everything else should be regulated out of existence. </rant>
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    The best view to sort pictures !
ptidhomme 6y ago
Starting 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).
- Arainach 6y ago
  I find the Ribbon's contextual options perfect. When I'm at the root of My Computer, it's useful to see "Map Network Drive". When I'm in any other location, I don't care about that, so it's gone. When I click on a ZIP file it's useful to see options for extraction, etc. The Ribbon is far more useful for new users. It's true that if you memorized the Excel 97 menu layout you may not find things exactly where they were, but most users would never have been able to find things they wanted in the menu anyway. My experience is that people who complain about the ribbon largely use keyboard shortcuts (which still exist) anyway, if they've even used Windows in the last decade.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Maybe people will like the Ribbon more if reminded that it replaced an MSIE-powered sidebar.
    - efreak 6y ago
      The ribbon replaced menus. These menus no longer exist. The sidebars also no longer exist, but they didn't have as much functionality as the menus did.
- ketzu 6y ago
  After reading this comment, I opened up my explorer to notice, there is a ribbon there. In the default overview it actually has some buttons I would use (but it's the small ones) as I don't regularly add network mounts or addresses. I think I ignored it after having no use for it in the beginning (and as my usual operations in the explorer are mostly navigation based).
open-source-ux 6y ago
"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/inductive-user-interface https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/appuistart/in...
- grandchild 6y ago
  And then there was Active Desktop. I remember setting an HTML file as desktop wallpaper, so I could have an animated wallpaper. :) (Why I wanted my wallpaper to visually distract me at every step is beyond me today, but I had fun.)
  - theandrewbailey 6y ago
    All I remember about Active Desktop is how it would make everything slower. I would convert JPG images to BMP before setting them as desktop wallpaper, because JPG would require Active Desktop turned on (along with its slowness), BMP didn't.
  - forgotpwd16 6y ago
    I was using it to read RSS, show some network info such as external IP and have a text field which could be used as a notepad. It was superseded by the arguably better designed, but more resource intensive, gadget system.
    - efreak 6y ago
      Which was then removed for...reasons. Of course. Why would you want to have little bits of software that could run on your desktop? You know, like sticky notes, a larger clock, weather that doesn't require opening more software/website...
CrlNvl 6y ago
And still no tabs. I know about Clover, QTTabbar (my current choice) and Groupy, but it still blows my mind we've had tabs in web browsers for nearly 20 years and not in local explorers.
- jerrygoyal 6y ago
  I found TidyTabs much better.. less visual clutter and small memory footprint
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  The Sets experiment (heterogeneous tabs for nearly every Windows title bar) from the Windows team was really cool. I was sad that I was never in one of the Insider cohorts to directly test it. It's unfortunate their testing feedback decided not to move forward with it, and that also the engineering complexities that happened because Edge switched to Chromium and would no longer be able to maintain some of the things Sets relied upon. Rumors (er, GitHub Issues) have it PowerToys might explore the idea again some day.
skrause 6y ago
The Windows NT4/95 Explorer was the best because I could actually configure the exact same details view everywhere and the Explorer would remember and keep my settings. Actually respecting the user's settings is something modern Microsoft doesn't view as important anymore.
- gsich 6y ago
  You can still do that.
mschuetz 6y ago
I can highly recommend altap salamander. It's an incredibly useful two panel file manager. You can switch between detail view and a big picture preview with alt+3 and alt+5. You can select folders/files with space, and in case of folders it will also show you the total file size of that folder. It has icons for available drives in a toolbar, and you can configure the F4 key so that it opens the focused file with an editor of your choice, notepad++ in my case.
axegon_ 6y ago
Here's a fun story: I stopped using Windows when I was 12, almost 20 years ago but Windows explorer was something I used 2000 times a day and I got so used to opening it with win+e that even till this day I set this shortcut to open Nautilus.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  Muscle memory is a bitch. I'm primarily on Windows, but whenever I need to install and mess with Linux the first thing I do is find a way to make the window manager tile to half screen with "Win+arrows". Cannot live without that shortcut.
  - galacticdessert 6y ago
    Yeah me too. I have to say that even if I love Linux and run it on all my personal machines, the keyboard shortcuts of Windows tend to be much more effective than let's say KDE or Gnome. Control+shift+N to make new folders, win + arrows to move and snap windows, Win+L to lock, etc. are quite ergonomic. As a comparison, KDE defaults to f10 to make a new folder (terrible as far to reach, and usually mapped to a multimedia key on laptops), and has no default keybindings to move windows
signal11 6y ago
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" mode was a power-user interface that needed you to right-click and choose Explore, or press Win+E (or create a permanent shortcut). To be fair, because right-clicking was new in Windows 95, the help materials did emphasize right-clicking. As the article below indicates, the Win95 team did consider designing an entire 'Beginner UI' for beginner users, but eventually dropped the idea. This article[1] (it has previously been on HN before) has some interesting insights on the design of Windows 95 with respect to Explorer. Bear in mind, one of Win95's design goals was to be usable for both those new to computers as well as power users. > Beginning users and many intermediates were confused by the two-pane view of File Cabinet. (See Figure 3.) They were unsure of the relationship between the panes and how to navigate between folders. Beginners were often overwhelmed by the visual complexity of the File Cabinet and had more basic problems, such as not understanding how folders could exist inside of other folders. Many users were also confused by the Parent Folder icon. It appeared in every folder and looked like a file, yet was really a navigation control for moving up the hierarchy one level. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/238386.238611 Edit: > [For Windows 8+, referring to the icons at the top of the toolbar] Microsoft remains absolutely addicted to the idea of a toolbar with "commonly used" commands on it. Despite the clear internal order to get rid of all these toolbars, someone insisted that they had to remain, had to, and so they got stuffed into the titlebar. Given that Explorer took the "Ribbon" idea from Office 2007 (probably because Steven Sinofsky had a hand in both), the icons at the top of the toolbar are much more likely to be Explorer's implementation of Office's Quick Action Toolbar. In fact, looking at Office 365 UI, there seems to be a trend of bundling more functionality into the Title Bar these days.
- toyg 6y ago
  >> Beginning users and many intermediates were confused by the two-pane view of File Cabinet Definitely my experience as a pre-teen. The 9x UI was much more intuitive. > there seems to be a trend of bundling more functionality into the Title Bar these days. Yes and I find it annoying, because 1) they are so small, and 2) now you cannot intuitively know whether something on the titlebar is a button or decoration. Flat UIs suck.
quyleanh 6y ago
And the endless question is: When we have fluent design UI version of Explorer?
- rzzzt 6y ago
  Treat yourself on the many takes of file explorer designs: https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer
- magnio 6y ago
  There's a UWP version called Files UWP: https://github.com/files-community/files-uwp https://github.com/files-community/files-uwp
- gruez 6y ago
  I hope never. The leaks/concepts look awful.
6c696e7578 6y ago
Still not as good as Thunar. Or XTree Gold/ZTree
- ubercow13 6y ago
  I like Thunar, but what particular features of Thunar are better?
  - 6c696e7578 6y ago
    For me, it's the lack of bloat. I just want to see a directory, I don't need the overhead that explorer.exe requires. File browsing is all that's needed. What struck me as horrid in the 90s was just how much bloat there was which really pushed up the system requirements. Quite a few times I'd drop out of Windows and just do what I needed in xtree gold. Not because of a feature that it had, but because I could do it quicker. It had a hex viewer though which was nice. I remember browsing through word docs in hex and spotting some system info that was embedded in the saved documents. Those were the days. Thunar seems to present directories in a way that makes better use of screen space somehow, it doesn't seem to waste space quite so much. I can't really explain it very well, but it seems to get more information in less space. Feels faster too. Maybe just usablity.
edwinyzh 6y ago
For document tabs, file tags, notes, and so on, can I recommend my DocxManager (https://docxmanager.com https://docxmanager.com) for "File Manager for Word documents"?
helenius 6y ago
Interesting thing about File Explorer is that the 20-year-old APIs for extending it still work! While File Explorer has changed between Windows versions, the underlying Win32 API seems to be the same. A year ago I dove into shell extensions [1] to implement a drag-and-drop gesture for a file type. I wanted to create a bookmarking system for files in File Explorer based on nothing more than the bookmark being named after the file I want to bookmark (so they're next to each other when sorted from A-Z) [2]. I had not used Visual C++ before but the tutorials I found from the early 2000s, and some helpful advice from MSFT via Stackoverflow, got me through it. There is also a simpler way to write Shell extensions using a C# wrapper if that works for your use case [3]. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/shell-exts https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/shell-e... [2]: https://filemark.app/ https://filemark.app/ [3]: https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell
tangue 6y ago
I switched from Windows to OSX 15 years ago, the only thing I miss sometimes is the Windows Explorer, though it's not perfect it's really better.
- FlorianRappl 6y ago
  Could not agree more. Finder is a mess. Explorer just gets the job done.
dfox 6y ago
The article says that Windows 95 file explorer is not that deeply altered from File Manager. While this might be somewhat true in visual sense, it is completely different beast in what it does. File Manager was just what it says on the tin and showed directories and files, while Explorer displays what is essentially an arbitrary graph of COM objects and allows you to call methods on them. One particularly notable point about that is that it is not that MS renamed directories to folders in Windows 95, these are names for two slightly different concepts. Directories are on filesystem, while folder is essentially anything that can be shown as explorer window (including desktop, control panel, various synthesized views of start menu contents, "god-mode menu"...).
- pjc50 6y ago
  Ah yes, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Master_Control_Panel_shortcut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Master_Control_Panel_s... > The shortcut is implemented by creating a folder with the extension .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
- Lammy 6y ago
  What about “Libraries”? I could never tell quite what they were trying to do.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Libraries are great. They were intended to be a handy tool for casual Windows users, but unfortunately did not get the UX clear/simple enough for casual users so it got relegated to the Power User tools most people will ignore (and de-emphasized in Windows 10 to the point where it's mostly only Power Users left that will bother to find Libraries and activate it). The attempted explanation from the article. > Windows 7 introduced this concept - Libraries, meta-spaces that grouped together multiple actual folders on the disk to create what database developers call a view. The Pictures location is not just a folder, it's potentially several folders. Don't worry about it, Windows will figure this out for you and simply present what you wish to see. An interesting idea I don't believe anyone wanted, or that in fact really worked at all. Libraries work pretty great. There's still a few issues with them, mostly in specific applications that use older common dialogs for whatever compatibility reasons, but they do what they are designed to do: a Library is simply a virtual folder that aggregates other folders. The article's comparison is to a database view versus a table and that's an accurate analogy. Any folder can be in a given library with one big caveat (and it is possibly the biggest that I've seen often trips casual users) so long as it is actively indexed by the Windows Search services (which is why it especially breaks the casual users that are the sort of mid-level almost power users that heard somewhere turning off Windows Search services was a "performance boost"). (Because it is Search services that provide the "view", and is the database powering the virtual folder.) The default Libraries are based on the old school My breakdowns: My Pictures, My Documents, My Music, My Videos. But you can create your own Library of any combination of folders of interest to you. One place it is very useful is for instance my Documents library. I can have one view that shows Documents I've got stored locally on the device only, stuff I've got in Dropbox, stuff I've in OneDrive, stuff I've got in iCloud, stuff I've got in Resilio Sync shares. It doesn't matter to me "where" I've got that particular file stored, I can search/browse the Library and access/filter/group all of the files in one place. I can even set the default save location to whichever cloud (or otherwise) service I most trust at the moment, so if I just save a new file to my Documents library, it'll save to the Resilio Sync folder I chose this week. Last week it was a OneDrive folder, and maybe next week my needs will change again I will be back to the local-only folder. No matter which "where" it is currently pointing to, I can just select the Library in the File > Save dialog, save, and the Library will handle remembering which folder I wanted to save to this week. OneDrive today offers the option to entirely replace the local-only Documents folder, and if that's the only provider I used that might be a good option. Libraries fit really well in this world where I have multiple providers for different needs and with different storage capabilities. On my work computer one of those Documents folders might be a file share (so long as it is a relatively recent file server with up-to-date Offline and Search Indexing capabilities). The same expands out to other roles like Pictures/Videos/Music. (I have multiple cloud providers for my music. I've got OneDrive and iCloud with different sets of photos. Etc.) The idea is useful for other things. For instance, I sometimes have multiple folders for things like Git Repos, splitting them across drives due to file size for instance, and having a Repos library that shows me every Repo I'm working on no matter which drive it is physically stored on can be very useful. You can also do some of that with NT Junction Points / Reparse Points, but that's even more extremely a Power User-only approach (and sometimes not recommended simply because of how many footguns are lying around there). Doing it as a virtual folder that's really just a Search View is all I really need in most cases. The biggest trade-off is mostly that Libraries don't exist in the Command Line world, I can't CD to a Library in CMD. (If there were the right sort of Provider I should be able to CD to a Library directly in PowerShell, though sadly a quick search doesn't turn up an out of the box PowerShell provider for them; a shame.) But I can still open the Library in Explorer and select any subfolder in the Library and File > Open in PowerShell (Alt+F,R) it, and Explorer will do the work of figuring out which storage place it is in (its full path) for me.
chinathrow 6y ago
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.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  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.
  - RMPR 6y ago
    >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. Laughing in Midnight commander
    - ubercow13 6y ago
      Dolphin is approximately as fast as mc for me at listing large directories, both the same speed as 'ls'. Which is quite impressive when you consider how much more metadata it will show than mc and that it has a full graphical widget displaying them with thumbnail previews. AFAIK mc can't even show mimetypes in the file list, but Dolphin will load them asynchronously after listing the directory as you scroll.
    - MayeulC 6y ago
      Ranger is pretty nice to work with as far as TUIs are concerned -- bulk rename, N-split panes, tabs, image previews... it does a lot, and the default view is surprisingly usable to look for a file. The only thing I miss with it is a "goto" shortcut, à la vim sneak. Ironically, Dolphin or Explorer go to a file when you start typing its name. Don't get me started on GNOME searching files.
p4bl0 6y ago
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.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  I always used it in "windows 2000" skin mode to save on computer resources. Can still vividly remember the day I got a new computer with enough RAM that running the Win Xp default theme didn't really make an impact.
- Sharlin 6y ago
  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.
ubercow13 6y ago
My favourite advanced secret feature of Explorer is that you can sort files by multiple columns. First sort by the primary column such as file type, and then shift-click a secondary column such as date to add it as a second sort criteria.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  omg... THANK YOU!
- mkl 6y ago
  Can't you do that by sorting by the secondary column first, then the primary? I think the sort is stable, so that works.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    No, when you non-shift-click a column it seems to reset the secondary sort field to the filename regardless. And this method will make it remember the multpile sort criteria when navigating across folders and restarting Explorer, which goes further than just stable sorting.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Hm, you are right!
vishnuharidas 6y ago
If you had fought with the Redlof virus, your 90s were awesome! Windows 98 Explorer had a feature that allowed to customize the view by adding the `Folder.htt` and `Desktop.ini` files inside a folder. The `Folder.htt` actually allowed to run VBScript inside it. This was exploited by a virus named `VBS.Redlof.a` and spread everywhere around the world infecting all Win98 computers. If you accidentally open a folder with the Redlof files in it, it will infect the computer, make their own copies to every other folder that your visit, writes themselves into your Floppy disks, thus spreading into other computers where those floppies are used. This article took me back to those days!
Sharlin 6y ago
The author finds the My Computer/Explorer dichotomy strange, but to me the aim always felt perfectly clear. Reducing the visual clutter and mental overhead of the directory tree in the ”casual user” mode, while still providing a more powerful mode for advanced users. Windows 95 also hid file extensions, as well as hidden and system files, by default. This design direction to abstract away filesystem details has, of course, continued over the years, especially on mobile OSs—although recently even Apple, begrudgingly, has admitted that maybe the concept of ”files” is useful even on iOS, after all.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It would have been more interesting a dichotomy if the "Folder view" was truly a spatial navigation system, which it seems like it wanted to be but never committed to. It seems a shame that all OSes today seem to have given up on spatial navigation.
fortran77 6y ago
Windows 3.1 was so beautiful. Why can't we have pretty UI anymore?
siggen 6y ago
Replacing the menu interface with the ribbon interface in Win10 and Office... I am not sure what the thought process was for Microsoft to have done that. Sometimes you already have something solid and it doesn’t need change. I liked being able to navigate the explorer UI with the keyboard with hints provided directly in the UI. For example, Alt+T O opened the tools menu, then the Options dialog box. But now, there’s no menu....
- icegreentea2 6y ago
  I understand the frustration at having changes work against muscle memory, but you can still navigate the UI as you described - it's just that "Options" is bundled under "View" now. alt,v,y,enter or alt,v,y,o will open the options dialog. The hints are now hidden until you hit alt now though =/
  - siggen 6y ago
    Right... it’s a solution for folks who have this existing knowledge. The aim I guess is to transition folks to non-keyboard devices for navigating the UI...
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Menus in Windows had already lost the accelerator key decorations by default well before the Ribbon (by almost a decade at that point). The Ribbon didn't cause the loss of always visible accelerator key UI, the Ribbon was built when accelerator key UI was already lost for being too noisy.
- AnonC 6y ago
  The ribbon came in MS Office 2007 as a result of user studies that showed that menus weren’t effective in showing the users what was possible or what features were available in an application. That’s why this new UI (“Fluent UI”) was designed for better discoverability. [1] Once you do something new and different, I suppose it’s natural to copy it over everywhere else (like Windows Explorer). [1]: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09
cosmodisk 6y ago
I think the design that made sense stopped with Win XP. The following iterations just make less and less sense and I'm a win user since 3.1.
- slantyyz 6y ago
  For me, the pinnacle of Windows Explorer UI was Windows 2000. I am such a fan of it that for the many years I was a Mac user, I wished that there was a Finder replacement that was more like Windows Explorer. The change in Explorer I hated the most was when they switched the '+' in the tree view to disclosure triangles. I still use Classic Explorer [1] on every Windows computer to try and get File Explorer to look like older Explorers as much as possible. [1] http://classicshell.net/features/#explorer http://classicshell.net/features/#explorer
oblio 6y ago
To the author: stop railing about toolbars. Misguided as Microsoft is in many cases, they do have metrics for those things and people do press them. I can also add a ton of anecdotal evidence pointing that even super smart casual users don't know or use keyboard shortcuts. Even for copy paste, in many cases. Sad from our point of view, but a lot of people have better things to do with their lives and we should stop judging them.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  I like toolbars for quick, frequent-but-not-that-much actions, like exporting to a pdf in LibreOffice. But I also like menu bars, as those give you some shortcuts if you often use a functionality. As an example, and since I type this into Firefox right now, after glancing at the menus, Alt+V,Y,N disables the page stylesheets, Alt+T,S synchronizes the account, etc.
  - omegabravo 6y ago
    like menubars, the toolbars give you the short cuts when you hover over them.
lqet 6y ago
Ha, I remember the Windows 3.11 File Manager [0], it was always anoying when you accidentally clicked on the drive A: icon and the explorer would hang for a few seconds as the drive spun up and checked whether a disk was inserted. [0] https://gekk.info/articles/images/wfw311_explorer.png https://gekk.info/articles/images/wfw311_explorer.png
- KORraN 6y ago
  I believe it was the case in Win98SE as well, as it was my first PC OS and I remember this issue. I was always so annoyed when I miss clicked AGAIN.
cryo 6y ago
Shameless plug: I'm currently trying a new approach to file system navigation in my new visual file manager 'cryo' https://cryonet.io https://cryonet.io
- zarmin 6y ago
  Okay I absolutely love this!
  - cryo 6y ago
    Thanks :) it's very limited yet compared to other file managers but will hopefully gain more features soon.
snarfy 6y ago
I remember my friend modified the win 3.1 startup shell and replaced progman.exe with winfile.exe. Program manager wasn't needed. You could run any program from file manager, and it also had File->Run... menu option.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  The real joy was modifying the Windows 95 startup shell on upgraded machines to progman.exe or winfile.exe and really confusing users about their "Windows 95.1"
therealmarv 6y ago
Since Windows 95 always better than macOS Finder (using macOS myself). Copy and Paste anyone on Mac? ;)
- omegabravo 6y ago
  Enter to rename gets me every time.
richard_todd 6y ago
From 2020/retrospect it seems obvious that people would not want to switch from local files to web-pages in the same window, but it's also kind of a shame that their integrated rich-content vision didn't work out. I would rather have a unified local machine+internet experience where local and network resources are fungible, instead of "the computer is one way to run a web browser". I guess PWAs are the next chance at something better, if they can ever get things like local file access worked out and deployed.
interestica 6y ago
I'll add my recommendation for [OneCommander](https://mobile.twitter.com/onecommander https://mobile.twitter.com/onecommander) as a better alternative to File Explorer. it uses modified Miller Columns (like what you see in OSX/Finder) for file display. V3 alpha is hopefully out in a few weeks. I still can't get the left sidebar in file explorer to scroll properly. Its speed of scroll is directly tied to the width of the sidebar.
waiseristy 6y ago
35 years of development, and it still will crash my shell the moment I right click in a slow network folder! At least MS in their infinite wisdom fixed the problem by simply restarting the shell again once it crashes! Genius!
teddyuk 6y ago
I love this, find it fascinating but this isn't right: "which is historically interesting only because it shows the direction Microsoft's product lines had shifted - suddenly NT was the line where new UI developments were being made and 9x was getting hand-me-downs." win me was the breeding ground for things that made it into win 2003, things like sfc, msconfig etc - all the utilities went into me first and then to 2003.
michalf6 6y ago
There’s an interesting article about ADHD on authors website: https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html
vagrantJin 6y ago
Watch me save this page to blow my mind a thousand times over.
Apofis 6y ago
8.1 seems to have looked the nicest. The borders of explorer should have been transparent like the taskbar.

186 points by kleff 6y ago

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.

vbezhenar 6y ago
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.
pjc50 6y ago
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.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  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.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    ROX-Filer is still my favorite file manager for lightweight desktops today.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
This is something MacOS has over Windows. Dragging a folder from Finder into the safe file dialogue opens that folder in the dialogue. You can also drag a search result from Spotlight in to the save file dialogue. Also works with the open file dialogue.
- throw67642 6y ago
  In Windows, you can just copy the file path from Explorer and paste it into the save file dialog.
  - galad87 6y ago
    On macOS too, you can press cmd-shift-g and paste the path.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Yep, I’m aware of that. MacBook touchpad right under the keyboard makes drag n drop feel like a superior method. For context, I have a fairly extensive AutoHotKey script and a 22 button Razer Naga configured to automate repetitive tasks on my Windows 10 work PC, and Windows 10 has proven itself to be super stable and robust at work and home, so I’m by no means a bias MacOS fan or whatever, and if I’m honest I really do prefer Windows 10... and my 2013 MBPr died the other day, and there’s not much chance of me buying another MacBook any time soon because they’re over priced and lack ports. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, there’s some things MacOS does that are great UI design....
- ubercow13 6y ago
  That works with GTK and Qt file dialogs on Linux too
edwinyzh 6y ago
I second your rationale because I always do that like you. And the good news is that, you can achieve that with Listary. I'm using an old version of it due to few years ago I found that new versions do perform as fast as the old ones.
- wronex 6y ago
  Thanks for the tip! Will give it a try.
compressedgas 6y ago
I like the idea and wrote a longer comment. But I must object to your two universal statements as they are without further qualification I find them false. It is possible to start any program via a file association even if it does nothing with the file that the action was activated on. Saving a new file only requires the file chooser if the application was started first. If the file is created in Explorer via the New ... Templates and then opened the use of the file chooser can be avoided.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It's too bad Templates got flooded with junk back in the Windows 95 days and so people stopped using and Developers stopped creating Templates. OS/2's heartier version of Templates, I recall being extremely useful. Windows' Templates seem derelict and forgotten ruins of the ancients in Windows today.
  - efreak 6y ago
    Isn't a template just an empty document/file/archive stored in a specific folder somewhere? That doesn't require and special technical knowledge or anything, just save an empty file there. I have a dozen or so software shortcuts (notepad++, cmd, etc) in the SendTo folder, which works similarly.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      The issue is that it is a small tragedy of the commons. The more apps put templates in the Templates folder the longer that context menu gets and the harder it is use. Context menus have never been a great place for lists of options that might grow unbounded over time. In the early years of Windows 9x you could directly watch that: almost every application installed a Template because it was a new thing to do and Windows encouraged it, then users started complaining they had too many items in that menu and it was too slow and they stopped using it (or never bothered learning it in the first place), then all of the applications stopped installing templates. (The SendTo folder had a similar wave of too many then too few applications installing to it. I feel like every application that really made sense on the context menu seem to have moved to direct context menu entries in the main context menu rather than SendTo.)
gravislizard 6y ago
This feature is actually implemented in OS/2, which was a Microsoft project at one point. It came so close to reaching windows, and would have made the system common dialogs far more powerful.

vbezhenar 6y ago

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.

gjhr 6y ago
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.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
How did you happen upon this tidbit? I imagine going through an actual book and doing all the exercises, or something similar like a course for Windows or whatever might cover it?
- Kuinox 6y ago
  Not the one you asked but i'll answer: I discovered it myself: Most of the program like this one take a path to know where it should open. I was searching how to open vscode is current folder ("code .") and figured you could do with a bunch of other tools, like cmd, gitextensions, powershell, explorer...
cstuder 6y ago
Another tip: Shift-Right-Click a file in Explorer and "Copy as path" will appear in the context menu. Puts the full file path in your clipboard.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  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.

accrual 6y ago

Related and kind of interesting, the original File Manager was open sourced and recompiled for modern Windows. https://github.com/microsoft/winfile https://github.com/microsoft/winfile

timvdalen 6y ago
Floating windows in floating windows, I can't believe I forgot that was ever a thing.
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  It's called Multiple Document Interface (MDI) and in some instances can be quite useful. MS have completely depreciated it now to the extent that MDI apps no longer render their window chrome properly since Windows 7.
  - vinw 6y ago
    FYI: deprecate [0] [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate
    - Jaruzel 6y ago
      FYI: depreciated [0] :) [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/depreciated https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deprecia...
      - bmn__ 6y ago
        Yes, that's the wrong word. Please note the difference in usage.
        Jaruzel 6y ago
        No, I used it correctly for what I was saying. Don't put words in my mouth please. MDI has not been removed. It's been DEPRECIATED as in it's still there and it still works (kinda) but MS no longer see value in it's function. My terminology for what I was saying was correct. This sub-thread is a classic example of HN pedantry. Down vote me into oblivion if it makes you happy. /sigh

frou_dh 6y ago

My 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!"

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
The best viewing mode is detailed. Everything else should be regulated out of existence. </rant>
- speedgoose 6y ago
  The best view to sort pictures !

ptidhomme 6y ago

Starting 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).

Arainach 6y ago
I find the Ribbon's contextual options perfect. When I'm at the root of My Computer, it's useful to see "Map Network Drive". When I'm in any other location, I don't care about that, so it's gone. When I click on a ZIP file it's useful to see options for extraction, etc. The Ribbon is far more useful for new users. It's true that if you memorized the Excel 97 menu layout you may not find things exactly where they were, but most users would never have been able to find things they wanted in the menu anyway. My experience is that people who complain about the ribbon largely use keyboard shortcuts (which still exist) anyway, if they've even used Windows in the last decade.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Maybe people will like the Ribbon more if reminded that it replaced an MSIE-powered sidebar.
  - efreak 6y ago
    The ribbon replaced menus. These menus no longer exist. The sidebars also no longer exist, but they didn't have as much functionality as the menus did.
ketzu 6y ago
After reading this comment, I opened up my explorer to notice, there is a ribbon there. In the default overview it actually has some buttons I would use (but it's the small ones) as I don't regularly add network mounts or addresses. I think I ignored it after having no use for it in the beginning (and as my usual operations in the explorer are mostly navigation based).

open-source-ux 6y ago

"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/inductive-user-interface https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/appuistart/in...

grandchild 6y ago
And then there was Active Desktop. I remember setting an HTML file as desktop wallpaper, so I could have an animated wallpaper. :) (Why I wanted my wallpaper to visually distract me at every step is beyond me today, but I had fun.)
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  All I remember about Active Desktop is how it would make everything slower. I would convert JPG images to BMP before setting them as desktop wallpaper, because JPG would require Active Desktop turned on (along with its slowness), BMP didn't.
- forgotpwd16 6y ago
  I was using it to read RSS, show some network info such as external IP and have a text field which could be used as a notepad. It was superseded by the arguably better designed, but more resource intensive, gadget system.
  - efreak 6y ago
    Which was then removed for...reasons. Of course. Why would you want to have little bits of software that could run on your desktop? You know, like sticky notes, a larger clock, weather that doesn't require opening more software/website...

CrlNvl 6y ago

And still no tabs. I know about Clover, QTTabbar (my current choice) and Groupy, but it still blows my mind we've had tabs in web browsers for nearly 20 years and not in local explorers.

jerrygoyal 6y ago
I found TidyTabs much better.. less visual clutter and small memory footprint
WorldMaker 6y ago
The Sets experiment (heterogeneous tabs for nearly every Windows title bar) from the Windows team was really cool. I was sad that I was never in one of the Insider cohorts to directly test it. It's unfortunate their testing feedback decided not to move forward with it, and that also the engineering complexities that happened because Edge switched to Chromium and would no longer be able to maintain some of the things Sets relied upon. Rumors (er, GitHub Issues) have it PowerToys might explore the idea again some day.

skrause 6y ago

The Windows NT4/95 Explorer was the best because I could actually configure the exact same details view everywhere and the Explorer would remember and keep my settings. Actually respecting the user's settings is something modern Microsoft doesn't view as important anymore.

gsich 6y ago
You can still do that.

mschuetz 6y ago

I can highly recommend altap salamander. It's an incredibly useful two panel file manager. You can switch between detail view and a big picture preview with alt+3 and alt+5. You can select folders/files with space, and in case of folders it will also show you the total file size of that folder. It has icons for available drives in a toolbar, and you can configure the F4 key so that it opens the focused file with an editor of your choice, notepad++ in my case.

axegon_ 6y ago

Here's a fun story: I stopped using Windows when I was 12, almost 20 years ago but Windows explorer was something I used 2000 times a day and I got so used to opening it with win+e that even till this day I set this shortcut to open Nautilus.

glaberficken 6y ago
Muscle memory is a bitch. I'm primarily on Windows, but whenever I need to install and mess with Linux the first thing I do is find a way to make the window manager tile to half screen with "Win+arrows". Cannot live without that shortcut.
- galacticdessert 6y ago
  Yeah me too. I have to say that even if I love Linux and run it on all my personal machines, the keyboard shortcuts of Windows tend to be much more effective than let's say KDE or Gnome. Control+shift+N to make new folders, win + arrows to move and snap windows, Win+L to lock, etc. are quite ergonomic. As a comparison, KDE defaults to f10 to make a new folder (terrible as far to reach, and usually mapped to a multimedia key on laptops), and has no default keybindings to move windows

signal11 6y ago

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" mode was a power-user interface that needed you to right-click and choose Explore, or press Win+E (or create a permanent shortcut). To be fair, because right-clicking was new in Windows 95, the help materials did emphasize right-clicking. As the article below indicates, the Win95 team did consider designing an entire 'Beginner UI' for beginner users, but eventually dropped the idea. This article[1] (it has previously been on HN before) has some interesting insights on the design of Windows 95 with respect to Explorer. Bear in mind, one of Win95's design goals was to be usable for both those new to computers as well as power users. > Beginning users and many intermediates were confused by the two-pane view of File Cabinet. (See Figure 3.) They were unsure of the relationship between the panes and how to navigate between folders. Beginners were often overwhelmed by the visual complexity of the File Cabinet and had more basic problems, such as not understanding how folders could exist inside of other folders. Many users were also confused by the Parent Folder icon. It appeared in every folder and looked like a file, yet was really a navigation control for moving up the hierarchy one level. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/238386.238611 Edit: > [For Windows 8+, referring to the icons at the top of the toolbar] Microsoft remains absolutely addicted to the idea of a toolbar with "commonly used" commands on it. Despite the clear internal order to get rid of all these toolbars, someone insisted that they had to remain, had to, and so they got stuffed into the titlebar. Given that Explorer took the "Ribbon" idea from Office 2007 (probably because Steven Sinofsky had a hand in both), the icons at the top of the toolbar are much more likely to be Explorer's implementation of Office's Quick Action Toolbar. In fact, looking at Office 365 UI, there seems to be a trend of bundling more functionality into the Title Bar these days.

toyg 6y ago
>> Beginning users and many intermediates were confused by the two-pane view of File Cabinet Definitely my experience as a pre-teen. The 9x UI was much more intuitive. > there seems to be a trend of bundling more functionality into the Title Bar these days. Yes and I find it annoying, because 1) they are so small, and 2) now you cannot intuitively know whether something on the titlebar is a button or decoration. Flat UIs suck.

quyleanh 6y ago

And the endless question is: When we have fluent design UI version of Explorer?

rzzzt 6y ago
Treat yourself on the many takes of file explorer designs: https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer
magnio 6y ago
There's a UWP version called Files UWP: https://github.com/files-community/files-uwp https://github.com/files-community/files-uwp
gruez 6y ago
I hope never. The leaks/concepts look awful.

6c696e7578 6y ago

Still not as good as Thunar. Or XTree Gold/ZTree

ubercow13 6y ago
I like Thunar, but what particular features of Thunar are better?
- 6c696e7578 6y ago
  For me, it's the lack of bloat. I just want to see a directory, I don't need the overhead that explorer.exe requires. File browsing is all that's needed. What struck me as horrid in the 90s was just how much bloat there was which really pushed up the system requirements. Quite a few times I'd drop out of Windows and just do what I needed in xtree gold. Not because of a feature that it had, but because I could do it quicker. It had a hex viewer though which was nice. I remember browsing through word docs in hex and spotting some system info that was embedded in the saved documents. Those were the days. Thunar seems to present directories in a way that makes better use of screen space somehow, it doesn't seem to waste space quite so much. I can't really explain it very well, but it seems to get more information in less space. Feels faster too. Maybe just usablity.

edwinyzh 6y ago

For document tabs, file tags, notes, and so on, can I recommend my DocxManager (https://docxmanager.com https://docxmanager.com) for "File Manager for Word documents"?

helenius 6y ago

Interesting thing about File Explorer is that the 20-year-old APIs for extending it still work! While File Explorer has changed between Windows versions, the underlying Win32 API seems to be the same. A year ago I dove into shell extensions [1] to implement a drag-and-drop gesture for a file type. I wanted to create a bookmarking system for files in File Explorer based on nothing more than the bookmark being named after the file I want to bookmark (so they're next to each other when sorted from A-Z) [2]. I had not used Visual C++ before but the tutorials I found from the early 2000s, and some helpful advice from MSFT via Stackoverflow, got me through it. There is also a simpler way to write Shell extensions using a C# wrapper if that works for your use case [3]. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/shell-exts https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/shell-e... [2]: https://filemark.app/ https://filemark.app/ [3]: https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell

tangue 6y ago

I switched from Windows to OSX 15 years ago, the only thing I miss sometimes is the Windows Explorer, though it's not perfect it's really better.

FlorianRappl 6y ago
Could not agree more. Finder is a mess. Explorer just gets the job done.

dfox 6y ago

The article says that Windows 95 file explorer is not that deeply altered from File Manager. While this might be somewhat true in visual sense, it is completely different beast in what it does. File Manager was just what it says on the tin and showed directories and files, while Explorer displays what is essentially an arbitrary graph of COM objects and allows you to call methods on them. One particularly notable point about that is that it is not that MS renamed directories to folders in Windows 95, these are names for two slightly different concepts. Directories are on filesystem, while folder is essentially anything that can be shown as explorer window (including desktop, control panel, various synthesized views of start menu contents, "god-mode menu"...).

pjc50 6y ago
Ah yes, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Master_Control_Panel_shortcut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Master_Control_Panel_s... > The shortcut is implemented by creating a folder with the extension .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Lammy 6y ago
What about “Libraries”? I could never tell quite what they were trying to do.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Libraries are great. They were intended to be a handy tool for casual Windows users, but unfortunately did not get the UX clear/simple enough for casual users so it got relegated to the Power User tools most people will ignore (and de-emphasized in Windows 10 to the point where it's mostly only Power Users left that will bother to find Libraries and activate it). The attempted explanation from the article. > Windows 7 introduced this concept - Libraries, meta-spaces that grouped together multiple actual folders on the disk to create what database developers call a view. The Pictures location is not just a folder, it's potentially several folders. Don't worry about it, Windows will figure this out for you and simply present what you wish to see. An interesting idea I don't believe anyone wanted, or that in fact really worked at all. Libraries work pretty great. There's still a few issues with them, mostly in specific applications that use older common dialogs for whatever compatibility reasons, but they do what they are designed to do: a Library is simply a virtual folder that aggregates other folders. The article's comparison is to a database view versus a table and that's an accurate analogy. Any folder can be in a given library with one big caveat (and it is possibly the biggest that I've seen often trips casual users) so long as it is actively indexed by the Windows Search services (which is why it especially breaks the casual users that are the sort of mid-level almost power users that heard somewhere turning off Windows Search services was a "performance boost"). (Because it is Search services that provide the "view", and is the database powering the virtual folder.) The default Libraries are based on the old school My breakdowns: My Pictures, My Documents, My Music, My Videos. But you can create your own Library of any combination of folders of interest to you. One place it is very useful is for instance my Documents library. I can have one view that shows Documents I've got stored locally on the device only, stuff I've got in Dropbox, stuff I've in OneDrive, stuff I've got in iCloud, stuff I've got in Resilio Sync shares. It doesn't matter to me "where" I've got that particular file stored, I can search/browse the Library and access/filter/group all of the files in one place. I can even set the default save location to whichever cloud (or otherwise) service I most trust at the moment, so if I just save a new file to my Documents library, it'll save to the Resilio Sync folder I chose this week. Last week it was a OneDrive folder, and maybe next week my needs will change again I will be back to the local-only folder. No matter which "where" it is currently pointing to, I can just select the Library in the File > Save dialog, save, and the Library will handle remembering which folder I wanted to save to this week. OneDrive today offers the option to entirely replace the local-only Documents folder, and if that's the only provider I used that might be a good option. Libraries fit really well in this world where I have multiple providers for different needs and with different storage capabilities. On my work computer one of those Documents folders might be a file share (so long as it is a relatively recent file server with up-to-date Offline and Search Indexing capabilities). The same expands out to other roles like Pictures/Videos/Music. (I have multiple cloud providers for my music. I've got OneDrive and iCloud with different sets of photos. Etc.) The idea is useful for other things. For instance, I sometimes have multiple folders for things like Git Repos, splitting them across drives due to file size for instance, and having a Repos library that shows me every Repo I'm working on no matter which drive it is physically stored on can be very useful. You can also do some of that with NT Junction Points / Reparse Points, but that's even more extremely a Power User-only approach (and sometimes not recommended simply because of how many footguns are lying around there). Doing it as a virtual folder that's really just a Search View is all I really need in most cases. The biggest trade-off is mostly that Libraries don't exist in the Command Line world, I can't CD to a Library in CMD. (If there were the right sort of Provider I should be able to CD to a Library directly in PowerShell, though sadly a quick search doesn't turn up an out of the box PowerShell provider for them; a shame.) But I can still open the Library in Explorer and select any subfolder in the Library and File > Open in PowerShell (Alt+F,R) it, and Explorer will do the work of figuring out which storage place it is in (its full path) for me.

chinathrow 6y ago

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.

ubercow13 6y ago
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.
- RMPR 6y ago
  >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. Laughing in Midnight commander
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    Dolphin is approximately as fast as mc for me at listing large directories, both the same speed as 'ls'. Which is quite impressive when you consider how much more metadata it will show than mc and that it has a full graphical widget displaying them with thumbnail previews. AFAIK mc can't even show mimetypes in the file list, but Dolphin will load them asynchronously after listing the directory as you scroll.
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    Ranger is pretty nice to work with as far as TUIs are concerned -- bulk rename, N-split panes, tabs, image previews... it does a lot, and the default view is surprisingly usable to look for a file. The only thing I miss with it is a "goto" shortcut, à la vim sneak. Ironically, Dolphin or Explorer go to a file when you start typing its name. Don't get me started on GNOME searching files.

p4bl0 6y ago

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.

glaberficken 6y ago
I always used it in "windows 2000" skin mode to save on computer resources. Can still vividly remember the day I got a new computer with enough RAM that running the Win Xp default theme didn't really make an impact.
Sharlin 6y ago
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.

ubercow13 6y ago

My favourite advanced secret feature of Explorer is that you can sort files by multiple columns. First sort by the primary column such as file type, and then shift-click a secondary column such as date to add it as a second sort criteria.

glaberficken 6y ago
omg... THANK YOU!
mkl 6y ago
Can't you do that by sorting by the secondary column first, then the primary? I think the sort is stable, so that works.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  No, when you non-shift-click a column it seems to reset the secondary sort field to the filename regardless. And this method will make it remember the multpile sort criteria when navigating across folders and restarting Explorer, which goes further than just stable sorting.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Hm, you are right!

vishnuharidas 6y ago

If you had fought with the Redlof virus, your 90s were awesome! Windows 98 Explorer had a feature that allowed to customize the view by adding the `Folder.htt` and `Desktop.ini` files inside a folder. The `Folder.htt` actually allowed to run VBScript inside it. This was exploited by a virus named `VBS.Redlof.a` and spread everywhere around the world infecting all Win98 computers. If you accidentally open a folder with the Redlof files in it, it will infect the computer, make their own copies to every other folder that your visit, writes themselves into your Floppy disks, thus spreading into other computers where those floppies are used. This article took me back to those days!

Sharlin 6y ago

The author finds the My Computer/Explorer dichotomy strange, but to me the aim always felt perfectly clear. Reducing the visual clutter and mental overhead of the directory tree in the ”casual user” mode, while still providing a more powerful mode for advanced users. Windows 95 also hid file extensions, as well as hidden and system files, by default. This design direction to abstract away filesystem details has, of course, continued over the years, especially on mobile OSs—although recently even Apple, begrudgingly, has admitted that maybe the concept of ”files” is useful even on iOS, after all.

WorldMaker 6y ago
It would have been more interesting a dichotomy if the "Folder view" was truly a spatial navigation system, which it seems like it wanted to be but never committed to. It seems a shame that all OSes today seem to have given up on spatial navigation.

fortran77 6y ago

Windows 3.1 was so beautiful. Why can't we have pretty UI anymore?

siggen 6y ago

Replacing the menu interface with the ribbon interface in Win10 and Office... I am not sure what the thought process was for Microsoft to have done that. Sometimes you already have something solid and it doesn’t need change. I liked being able to navigate the explorer UI with the keyboard with hints provided directly in the UI. For example, Alt+T O opened the tools menu, then the Options dialog box. But now, there’s no menu....

icegreentea2 6y ago
I understand the frustration at having changes work against muscle memory, but you can still navigate the UI as you described - it's just that "Options" is bundled under "View" now. alt,v,y,enter or alt,v,y,o will open the options dialog. The hints are now hidden until you hit alt now though =/
- siggen 6y ago
  Right... it’s a solution for folks who have this existing knowledge. The aim I guess is to transition folks to non-keyboard devices for navigating the UI...
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Menus in Windows had already lost the accelerator key decorations by default well before the Ribbon (by almost a decade at that point). The Ribbon didn't cause the loss of always visible accelerator key UI, the Ribbon was built when accelerator key UI was already lost for being too noisy.
AnonC 6y ago
The ribbon came in MS Office 2007 as a result of user studies that showed that menus weren’t effective in showing the users what was possible or what features were available in an application. That’s why this new UI (“Fluent UI”) was designed for better discoverability. [1] Once you do something new and different, I suppose it’s natural to copy it over everywhere else (like Windows Explorer). [1]: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09

cosmodisk 6y ago

I think the design that made sense stopped with Win XP. The following iterations just make less and less sense and I'm a win user since 3.1.

slantyyz 6y ago
For me, the pinnacle of Windows Explorer UI was Windows 2000. I am such a fan of it that for the many years I was a Mac user, I wished that there was a Finder replacement that was more like Windows Explorer. The change in Explorer I hated the most was when they switched the '+' in the tree view to disclosure triangles. I still use Classic Explorer [1] on every Windows computer to try and get File Explorer to look like older Explorers as much as possible. [1] http://classicshell.net/features/#explorer http://classicshell.net/features/#explorer

oblio 6y ago

To the author: stop railing about toolbars. Misguided as Microsoft is in many cases, they do have metrics for those things and people do press them. I can also add a ton of anecdotal evidence pointing that even super smart casual users don't know or use keyboard shortcuts. Even for copy paste, in many cases. Sad from our point of view, but a lot of people have better things to do with their lives and we should stop judging them.

MayeulC 6y ago
I like toolbars for quick, frequent-but-not-that-much actions, like exporting to a pdf in LibreOffice. But I also like menu bars, as those give you some shortcuts if you often use a functionality. As an example, and since I type this into Firefox right now, after glancing at the menus, Alt+V,Y,N disables the page stylesheets, Alt+T,S synchronizes the account, etc.
- omegabravo 6y ago
  like menubars, the toolbars give you the short cuts when you hover over them.

lqet 6y ago

Ha, I remember the Windows 3.11 File Manager [0], it was always anoying when you accidentally clicked on the drive A: icon and the explorer would hang for a few seconds as the drive spun up and checked whether a disk was inserted. [0] https://gekk.info/articles/images/wfw311_explorer.png https://gekk.info/articles/images/wfw311_explorer.png

KORraN 6y ago
I believe it was the case in Win98SE as well, as it was my first PC OS and I remember this issue. I was always so annoyed when I miss clicked AGAIN.

cryo 6y ago

Shameless plug: I'm currently trying a new approach to file system navigation in my new visual file manager 'cryo' https://cryonet.io https://cryonet.io

zarmin 6y ago
Okay I absolutely love this!
- cryo 6y ago
  Thanks :) it's very limited yet compared to other file managers but will hopefully gain more features soon.

snarfy 6y ago

I remember my friend modified the win 3.1 startup shell and replaced progman.exe with winfile.exe. Program manager wasn't needed. You could run any program from file manager, and it also had File->Run... menu option.

WorldMaker 6y ago
The real joy was modifying the Windows 95 startup shell on upgraded machines to progman.exe or winfile.exe and really confusing users about their "Windows 95.1"

therealmarv 6y ago

Since Windows 95 always better than macOS Finder (using macOS myself). Copy and Paste anyone on Mac? ;)

omegabravo 6y ago
Enter to rename gets me every time.

richard_todd 6y ago

From 2020/retrospect it seems obvious that people would not want to switch from local files to web-pages in the same window, but it's also kind of a shame that their integrated rich-content vision didn't work out. I would rather have a unified local machine+internet experience where local and network resources are fungible, instead of "the computer is one way to run a web browser". I guess PWAs are the next chance at something better, if they can ever get things like local file access worked out and deployed.

interestica 6y ago

I'll add my recommendation for [OneCommander](https://mobile.twitter.com/onecommander https://mobile.twitter.com/onecommander) as a better alternative to File Explorer. it uses modified Miller Columns (like what you see in OSX/Finder) for file display. V3 alpha is hopefully out in a few weeks. I still can't get the left sidebar in file explorer to scroll properly. Its speed of scroll is directly tied to the width of the sidebar.

waiseristy 6y ago

35 years of development, and it still will crash my shell the moment I right click in a slow network folder! At least MS in their infinite wisdom fixed the problem by simply restarting the shell again once it crashes! Genius!

teddyuk 6y ago

I love this, find it fascinating but this isn't right: "which is historically interesting only because it shows the direction Microsoft's product lines had shifted - suddenly NT was the line where new UI developments were being made and 9x was getting hand-me-downs." win me was the breeding ground for things that made it into win 2003, things like sfc, msconfig etc - all the utilities went into me first and then to 2003.

michalf6 6y ago

There’s an interesting article about ADHD on authors website: https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html

vagrantJin 6y ago

Watch me save this page to blow my mind a thousand times over.

Apofis 6y ago

8.1 seems to have looked the nicest. The borders of explorer should have been transparent like the taskbar.