Puts the full file path in your clipboard.
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.
"start "."" however opens another cmd window. Consistency is not a strong point.
I use Keypirinha, Everything, and other tools to get work done.
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.
The Ribbon gets a lot of flak for seeming complex or ugly (including from this article), but it added a lot of sweet Power User tools in easy to find places, and everything keyboard shortcut-able, if you give it a chance.
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?
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...
I spent an hour trying to get "Open Command window here" back on Windows 10, to no avail... and it was this simple :D
From the taskbar, you can middle-click on any preview window that pops up to close that window.
@echo %~f0
@if %1. == . goto simple
@rem explorer /e, %1
explorer /e, %1
@goto done
:simple
explorer /e,.
:done
> 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).
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.
The intersection of the aspirational and telemetry-based approaches is something of the "Office 20% Rule". The long standing aphorism is that everybody only uses about 20% of the features of a given Office application, but that everybody's 20% is different. That "Rule" is exactly why the Ribbon will never be "perfect" in what it emphasizes, it can only aspire to try its best given the goals it has (aspirations) and the data available (telemetry).
I think this approach is much better for power users than the old combo hotkeys - it's explorable, customizable, and memorizable at the same time, so you can both learn it easily and be productive.
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).
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"...).
> The shortcut is implemented by creating a folder with the extension .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 complain about it.
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.
(Why I wanted my wallpaper to visually distract me at every step is beyond me today, but I had fun.)
...and still one of the less popular options for using an app
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
It seems a shame that all OSes today seem to have given up on spatial navigation.
I want a massive checkbox that says "Never, EVER, try to automatically determine the best viewing mode. Really. Never!"
Everything else should be regulated out of existence.
</rant>
Actually respecting the user's settings is something modern Microsoft doesn't view as important anymore.
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.
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.
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-e... [2]: https://filemark.app/ [3]: https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell
Once you do something new and different, I suppose it’s natural to copy it over everywhere else (like Windows Explorer).
The true solution to that was probably deeper than clustering toolbar items by context. The very concept of a toolbar probably needed to be challenged.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Laughing in Midnight commander
Or XTree Gold/ZTree
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.
