Yes, the Windows 8 rumour mill is really spinning up now. This time around though, they’re not really rumours, since the information is coming from Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, long-time Microsoft enthusiasts with loads of insider access. They’ve got a bunch of screenshots showing a work in progress of… A ribbon in Explorer. And yes, it looks just as bad as it sounds.
The ribbon is a magnificent thing. It turned Microsoft Office from an inhospitable and undiscoverable utter mess of a user interface into something where you could actually find the things you were looking for. It didn’t use up more space than the old UI (contrary to popular belief), and thanks to the hide button, doesn’t get in your way if you don’t need it.
However, a ribbon interface has its place, and that place is with complicated applications with more features than you could fit in 17179869184 Excel cells. For applications with smaller, more compact feature sets, the advantages of the ribbon become pretty much non-existent, and it all starts looking a little silly – for example Paint in Window 7.
As such, the idea of a ribbon in Windows Explorer doesn’t really make me very excited. Explorer was finally slowly but surely starting to get halfway decent as a file manager in Windows 7 (like, ctrl+n finally just opens a new window, and a cleaner, less convoluted UI), but giving it a ribbon seems like six zero steps forward, 34523 steps back.
It would seem Rivera and Thurrot aren’t particularly excited about it either, and apparently, nor are all the folk in Redmond. “In early builds of Windows 8, this Ribbon UI is only half-finished and, frankly, of dubious value,” Rivera and Thurrot write, “In fact, based on the divergent ways in which various related UI elements are repeated around the window frame, we get the idea that the use of the Ribbon in Explorer is, in fact, quite controversial inside the halls of Microsoft’s Redmond campus.”
They note that the use of the ribbon in Explorer isn’t by any means final, and as such, I’m getting the idea that Microsoft is trying to gauge public response by letting the two oust this particular idea now. In other words, I’m hoping that the more disapproving we are, the less likely this change will make it to the final build. So, just to make myself absolutely clear: this is a bad idea, Sinofsky. Don’t do it. I will personally send you naked pictures of myself if you do this. You do not want that to happen.
Another, far more welcome change is the new welcome screen, which takes most of its design cues from the Windows Phone 7 ‘Metro’ user interface. As a very satisfied Windows Phone 7 user, I approve. Any steps taken to Metrofy the Windows 8 user interface is a step I will welcome by not sending any naked pictures of myself to Sinofsky. Heed this warning.
Windows will probably hit somewhere early 2012, so there’s still considerable leeway for the company to move things around and gauge interests by controlled leaks like this one. Now be good little readers and repeat after me: ribbon in Explorer BAD, moar Metro GOOD.
The new Explorer UI is very interesting.
In my application (a music player, see http://stoffiplayer.com) I have used Explorer as a measurement for the most native application on Windows. That’s why I have tried to mimic its interface as much as possible. It is clean and simple.
The funny thing is that I did actually experiment with a ribbon interface at first. But for a music application with the aim of being simple and feature a very clean interface it just didn’t fit.
Do I need to say that I will *not* continue to use Explorer as an inspiration if they go down this road.
Covers many possibilities from very good to completely insane.
Well I finally upgraded from Office 2000 to 2007 and so I got the ribbon well I^aEURTMve been using Access for a week and have got used to it ^aEUR“ but used to it like a slightly too tight shoe, it is horrid I think this is the first time I can remember ever having to use Google to find a feature on a toolbar, (usually when the feature is hidden on a submenu of the Office blob at the right hand.)
Seems to me the interface will have all the usability and attractiveness of the pilots controls on a new Boeing . Well I hope they keep the ^aEURoesearch programs and files^aEUR as it will be needed a lot (at least by me)
The new pilots controls on a boeing will look far less convoluted to commercial rated pilot.
Now.. fitting a Boeing cockpit into a Ford Focus then selling it to average drivers.. that’s probably how it feels for many people. “I need pedals for break and gas, a steering column and turning indicators.. what the heck are these thousand other buttons, dials and checklists for? And, why can’t I find where they’ve hidden those four basic features I actually need?”
Spot on!
That’s the whole charm of designing user interfaces: finding the balance. The ribbon interface has its place, but there’s also places where it should not be. I think that Windows Explorer is one of the latter.
Putting the ribbon interface into Explorer is a solution in search of a problem.
The ribbon clearly has no place in simpler applications. It’s about contextually displaying relevant features so you can declutter the interface of stuff that isn’t relevant to the task at hand. How often is something Explorer can do not relevant to basic file management? I can appreciate if they’d have contextual controls for when you select a video, or a picture, or a document, but that’s about as far as it needs to go.
Once you learn how to use it, you will wonder how you could have ever been productive using menus. The Ribbon UI is a very good concept.
It is a 100% better then menu’s. On OS X I kind of miss my overly large convoluted vertical tool box, but the truth is that the ribbon is just the toolbox in horizontal with adjustments in size based on how often most users need a specific feature.
The screen shots provided are way to beta for main stream it needs some clean up, but the move to me makes since. If they allow power users to still get to the nuts and bolts. I don’t mind my mom being able to use a ribbon. Even my laptops run at 1920×1200 now. While I don’t support interface bloat we all must admit there is a little more room then the old 800×600 era and its time for windows to move on
And my laptop, which is slightly less than 1 year old, does 1366×768
And let’s not forget all the 13″ laptops and netbooks out there…
Vertical space *does* matter, especially since this crazy widescreen idea is around.
My problem with the ribbon UI is that it combines icons of different sizes, text of different sizes, and arranges things in what appears to be a haphazard manner with very little “align-to-grid” anywhere. It really does look like someone filled a shotgun round with screen widgets and fired it at the top of the screen.
The beauty of a menu bar is that all the text is the same size, all the menus are spaced evenly, and the menus react the same.
The beauty of a toolbar is that the icons are all the same shape/size, and they all react the same. Granted, some toolbars add drop-down textboxes and similar, but things are the same size and aligned nicely to a grid.
The concept of a ribbon is good. But the MS implementations of the ribbon just aren’t.
Your “problem” is the beauty.. it makes the most common items the largest, with the lest commonly needed ones being smaller, all grouped by function.
Menes are deep and require moving the mouse all over the place to use a function.
With the risk of being off-topic, congrats on your Stoffi Music Player. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I really try to use only programs that look native and blend very well into the general OS theme.
I’ve got a few suggestions if you don’t mind, I hope they are useful and you’ll take at least some of them into account:
– after installing I’ve found a folder called “Stoffi Installer” in the same folder as the exe installer. It would be nice if the installer would clean up after itself, or at least decompress into temp/
– the first start was kinda slow (not annoyingly slow, but I think it could be improved)
– even when Stoffi is minimized to tray it still appears in the Alt+Tab task list
– I have a lot of songs that have a typical filename: “Artist – Trackname.mp3” but no ID3 info. In the Library/Playlist view there is a whole lot of nothing for those tracks (maybe you could make a smart Artist – Track column? – which shows the filename without the extension if no ID3 info is present)
– When you click/double-click the name of the playing song it would be nice if the view would center on that song
– It would be great if you could also see the path in the Track information window
– Search is quite slow. If I type continuously it takes a while for each letter to appear. I think it would improve usability if you’d search only when the user stopped typing
– A way in the preferences/installer to set the OS’es file associations for audio files.
Update:
– When you are in another application and you use a global shortcut that has meaning also in that application, both the local and global shortcuts get activated. Expected behavior would be if only the global shortcut would work
Great to hear that you like it. But since we don’t want to disturb people with ideas on how to make a great program into an awesome one, let’s continue this elsewhere.
I will put all your suggestions on http://dev.stoffiplayer.com/issues when I find the time. Short answer: I will fix them all.
(have a few follow-up questions though, so please drop me a message on my gmail and we can figure it out, my name is ephracis there as well)
Maybe I will like it. I didn’t like the Win7 explorer, but this Win8 explorer ribbon looks promising. Sure, it needs further development and testing, but some features such as “invert selection” and so on are useful. Also, third-party add-ins could offer enhanced functionality without clubbering the default user interface.
How long will it be before they introduce tabs or panes to Explorer? I find it ridiculous that they haven’t been there for years already.
Tabs are a rubbish user interface decision for a file manager.
If you’re going to make such claims, at least specify why you think they’re rubbish.
I find tabs quite useful in file managers. If you don’t like them, well, just don’t open any additional tabs and you wont even know they’re there.
It depends on the task for me but usually it’s an issue of not making multiple things visible.
In a browser where each website is a separate thing, tabs are great. I’d like more keyboard support in switching tabs but haven’t put the effort into looking for that either so it’s not that big a need.
In Thunderbird I don’t like it so much. Maybe it’s a lifetime of email programs opening an email in a new window or loosing the easy display overview of the mailbox while the email message tab is open. Here, the two objects are related. I don’t leave the mailbox view to access the email preview; I want them both visible even if that means two separate windows beside each other.
In Dolphin (KDE4’s file manager) I’m happy with the ability to split a view into two directories when copying between. I’d hate tabs though because one tab replaces the view of the other. If I don’t want both directories accessible in the same view, I’ll simply open a second Dolphin window and let the window manager’s natural layering/tiling do it’s job.
Konsole has had tabs for a long while but again, the purpose of multiple open shells for me is multiple visible shells. I want four displays beside each other not four displays with any three hidden at one time.
Vim I’m all about tabs but it may be more to do with “gt” sticking in my head and not being able to remember tiling switching commands when I actually need them. Tab switching is also keyboard driven by default and I can always open a second shell and vim if I really need two text files visible beside each other.
For a file manager, I’m just not feeling the excitement and grand possibilities provided by a tabbed display. No grief meant for those who do, it’s simply not for me at this time (I’ll give it a try when/if win8 includes it but I’m not optimistic).
You know you don’t have to use tabs if you don’t want to. As in your examples, if you want or need to see two seperate windows side by side, but if you want to have something open, but not in your face all the time, tabs are fine to have. Dolphin supports tabs too, but doesn’t shove them in your face if you don’t want them, and you mentioned you like Dolphin, so obviously its possible to have a tab supporting file manger that doesn’t cause you to tear your hair out.
As for the Ribbon UI in a file manager. I don’t like it one bit. I found ribbon good enough for word. Its better at managing complexity and exposing functionality than menus that go seven layers deep or several rows of toolbars crammed with tiny confusing icons.
But a file manager should be simple. The menus should be decently shallow, the toolbar should have ample space, and a right click context menu should be all a normal user should need. Here the Ribbon adds complexity and visual clutter. Whats next a ribbon for IE, Windows Media player? Sometimes the UI just needs to disappear, not get bigger.
Also I’m assuming the yellow circles are just placeholder icons, because otherwise those would be abominations.
“You know you don’t have to use tabs if you don’t want to.”
Agreed, I never claimed one had to use the tabs provided by a given program. For example, the first thin I turn off with Konsole is the tabbed display. And in that regard it’s perfectly fine. My grief is with programs which default to using tabs with no alternative available in the options and when tabs are not actually apropriate (for my uses).
I was simply giving examples based on my own use. For those that like tabs, that’s fantastic, just don’t try and sell them as the second coming or treasure at the end of the rainbow.
(edit): my work with GUI file managers is very mouse centric also. I value the mouse context menus far more than an button/menu/ribbon across the top of the window. If I drag something, I want to be asked “move or copy sir?” then see a progress display. Give me a right click to select Sort By and Detailed View then get out of my way so I can work with the files not the window frame.
None of this is meant to claim that other’s work the same way. I only provide my own experience and preferences for contrast.
Edited 2011-04-03 19:46 UTC
Really? Says YOU! I’ve been using a tabbed file explorer for years in Linux and frankly, every time I’m on a Windows box I curse Microsoft for not including tabs in explorer. With multiple tabs open to different file locations, it’s a breeze to quickly navigate between them without cluttering the desktop with myriad file explorer windows. Just because you haven’t discovered the joy of tabbed file browsing doesn’t mean others won’t or shouldn’t!
I guess you believe that CO2 is a pollutant?
What a ridiculous statement!
tabs make sense as long as you can copy and paste between them easily.
I hate having 4 or 5 explorer windows open at work and then having to click through them to figure out which one I need (still on XP). tabs would meed I can focus on the window I need and then select the pathway I need from the tabs.
You do realise there’s this thing called the taskbar, right? Works just like tabs. Crazy, I know.
that is exactly the problem. I have to click multiple task bar items just to find the right window. in a tab layout, I can arrange the tabs in a way that makes sense for the work flow and it is one click to focus the entire workflow.
Well then you might as well just ask MS to allow you to reorder taskbar items (Win 7 allows you to do it on a per-app basis, at least that’s some progress). It’ll benefit far more than just explorer usage.
Hell, get them to disable the stupid cascade window placement and create a decent implementation of workspaces and you won’t need tabs in your web browser, either. Alternatively, they could just have the taskbar raise all windows belonging a single app, so with one click, you can bring all your explorer windows in front of whatever else you’re running. Again, this would benefit more than just explorer usage. Tabs are a workaround for the weaknesses of the Windows desktop, using them to fix a Windows problem should be a final contingency.
task bar items are not tabs and in Windows 7 the task bar uses buttons.
For those of you complaining about the lack of Tabs on Explorer, try this:
http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/
I use it on Windows XP, Windows XP x64, and Windows 7.
Marvellous, I was just thinking explorer didn’t steal enough vertical screen real estate.
http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2011/03/09/still-no-update
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/Windows-Phone-7/Oh-NoDo-You-Don…
My phone has all the updates. I just had to remove the carrier ID, which was set to T-Mobile USA because my phone was an unlocked, T-Mo branded device. By now, T-Mo customers have the update. Carriers worldwide are already pushing the update as we speak, or will do so this week. I believe only AT&T still hasn’t given a date.
So yeah, I got my update in March, about a week ago.
Edited 2011-04-03 12:49 UTC
What are you getting at?
In one case Thom talks about iPhone hardware not being able to keep up (which I find debatable btw but that’s irrelevant) and then you seem to imply that he is not critical enough of WP7 devices, just because they were initially missing features? The one thing (Apple’s hardware release cycle) is not comparable with the other (Microsoft’s WP7 software release cycle).
I can’t remember if Thom was a loud proponent at the time. Keep the scope within software released and think back.
Apple release the Iphone OS without copy/paste, multitasking and such. It was a big proud flag for detractors to wave about “Iphone sucks cause it doesn’t do these basic things that other phones do!”
Win7 Phone OS launches without multitasking, cut/paste and such and everybody skips over it.
It’s perfectly OK for Win7 Phone to lack these features in early releases but when Apple does it and the sky is falling.
The lack of copy/paste was indeed a major issue, and “everybody skips over it” is simply not true. Just go back and read how everyone felt about it.
As for multitasking, the fact of the matter is that whioe multitasking certainly would be very nice, it is a little less of an issue due to how WP7 works – instead of applications, most of the most-often used functionality is integrated, for instance photo viewing/uploading/camera app/etc. all in one application. Same for things like contacts and Office documents. It simply makes the lack of multitasking a little less of an issue (but only a little less).
Than again, both iOS as well as WP7 whenever Mango comes out do not have multitasking as we know it. All they have is My First Multitasking(tm).
For a regular Joe or Jane Doe I don’t think lacking multitasking is really even a minor nuisance at all, they just simply don’t do anything that would benefit for multitasking. Nor would they think of having several apps open at the same time anyway.
For me, a smartphone without multitasking would really be a serious hindrance. Hell, I wouldn’t even really call it a smartphone in the first place without such. For example I like having my IM accounts signed-in at all times, 24/7, but Microsoft will definitely not include support for Skype, Jabber and Yahoo, so the only choice would be to run specific clients for those accounts. But without multitasking you can only run one client at a time and if you want to do anything else, like for example browse the web, you have to close the client first. Ugh.
Very true. My significant other never noticed a lack of multitasking with early Iphone generations.
Me on the other hand; media player open and paused, airodump sucking down a wireless capture and me swapping between address book and phone call with a friend calling for another’s phone number. But then, I bought the phone because it was the next evolutionary step from it’s hand-top computer predecessors. Metasploit and wireless audit apps in my pocket.. I’m all over that kind of fun.
I don’t think a regular Joe geek cares either.
Most people including most geeks just want to play a few games and then maybe listen to music while surfing the web. I bet if you went to a software developers convention the typical phone would be an iphone with a dozen games installed. It’s a minority of a minority that wants smartphones to have unrestricted multitasking. For most geeks the laptop or netbook is never that far away.
I remember a whole lot more noise about Iphone’s missing functions. There was a little noise about Win7 Phone but nothing like the scathing vitriol Iphone detractors fell over themselves expressing.
It’s very possible I was just reading other news when the Win7 Phone hype bus went past though too. I won’t claim to have been in the know and following it all closely.
Are you kidding me? I’ve seen the ‘no copy and paste’ dig posted a thousand times in forums and in dozens of articles. That and the ‘no multitasking’ have been the standard criticisms.
But anyone who thinks the success of a smartphone depends on cut and paste or multitasking is completely detached from the mainstream.
Android is primarily a success because there was no other option for Verizon users which gave them an entrenched position. The typical consumer doesn’t even know what multitasking is. WP7 has been more limited by Microsoft’s lousy marketing than any technical limitations. But all WP7 needs is a healthy enough share to encourage developers.
“Are you kidding me?”
Why yes. I am kidding you. I specifically set out with the intent to kid NT_Jerkface. From the moment I learned to type, this was my goal. Indeed, it is really all about you. I see I’ve played the game well.
</sarcasm>
I really didn’t like the ribbon feature in Office, but I can see how a ribbon would work better in a file browser. There are usually just a few common actions a person will perform with a file (copy/move/rename/delete/open/show properties), and a ribbon lends itself to that sort of behaviour.
If properly implemented this could stream line the interface for non power users.
And that is exactly what the ribbon was not designed to do. It’s main purpose is to give visibility to the least visible functions, otherwise the old toolbar was just fine.
Nope – the ribbon is pretty much the complete opposite of what you want. It’s a feature designed to pack the most complexity into the smallest space, which works okay for an office-like app (given it’s replacing all the existing toolbars and menus), but would just be pointless for a file manager that’s already pretty simple…
I must take issue with your opinion that the Explorer in Windows 7 is an improvement over that of Windows XP. On the contrary, it has become a bloated, unnavigable mess that just so happens to have a few nice features (favorites, previews, thumbnails). Sure, Explorer in XP wasn’t as pretty as in 7, and it certainly had its faults, but by and large (when you turned off the “Simple folder view” and turned on the status bar) it was a pleasure to use. Of course I never realized how nice it was until I moved to Windows Vista/7….
A few examples of what is still broken:
-When I have a folder selected on the left-hand side and I try to right-click a file on the right-hand side, it shows me the context menu for the left-hand-side folder–while visually for all intents and purposes looking as if I have selected the right-hand-side file. This leads to lovely scenarios born of this confusion, for instance if I try to delete I suddenly realize I am deleting the whole “C:” drive!
-The default settings are all wrong. The folders in the folder pane (left side) are all collapsed by default and when you navigate through folders on the right-side, your current place in the hierarchy is not reflected in the folder pane on the left side. This is fixable by changing a couple of little-known settings within Folder Options (see here:)
http://www.7tutorials.com/how-improve-windows-explorer-using-folder…
but even then, it ceases to work when navigating hidden folders (for instance anything within the C:\Users\username\AppData folder). The folder navigation pane used to “just work”, but with Vista/7, Microsoft messed it up.
-The old menu bar and status bar are still available, and contain features that overlap with the “new” UI, so enabling them just duplicates functionality while taking up screen real estate. The menus still offer a more comprehensive selection of options, though, and the old status bar actually takes up a lot less real estate than the new one, but it’s completely unskinned and fugly. Shouldn’t they have integrated the old features and eliminated all the cruft by now?
-Libraries suck. When you drag something to a library, which of the subfolders of that library does it really go into? It’s a mystery. I’d estimate that 95% of users have no idea how libraries work and just get confused when they see that for every library folder, there is another folder with a duplicate name inside of it. (Pictures->Pictures, Documents->Documents etc.) So for the vast majority of users, the library folders are just confusing and have no advantage over simply showing the folders that are *actually* present inside the home folder. As for me, most of the time they just get in the way. They take up vertical space in the folder pane (they are always expanded by default), blocking me from seeing the *actual* folders I am interested in, and they make navigating within the “Open file” dialog’s drop-down file list a PITA.
-Certain actions are inexplicably only shown on the toolbar in certain contexts. Prime example: “Map network drive” is only available when “Computer” is selected. Not when “Network” is selected. And not when you’re already looking right at the network folder you want to map. How intuitive is that?
/OT
As for the ribbon, I’m not entirely opposed to it. Fact is that Explorer gets more new features in every new version (e.g. Libraries, smart searches); maybe the ribbon will help new users navigate them. Just think about the amount of functionality that is currently all done in context menus, and think about the fact that not everyone uses them….
MS should think long and hard about those dynamic ribbon tabs though. Take a look at this picture:
http://static.withinwindows.com/2011/04/win8_ribbon_031.jpg
Why have two extra sets of tabs for “Library Tools” and “Picture Tools”, when each has just one sub-tab called “Manage”?? It’s horribly confusing. Just add two *normal*, but dynamically appearing tabs called “Libraries” and “Pictures” and be done with it.
This misappropriation of good UI reminds me of the monstrosity that is the Office 2010 File menu. They took a perfectly good concept, the Office 2007 menu, and used it the wrong way, making it needlessly cover up the whole screen (blocking the view of the current document) and eliminating its most useful feature, the Recent files list that was shown by default.
MS has a lot of great ideas, but there seems to be this problem where in each successive release, the once-great designs fall victim to feature bloat….
Edited 2011-04-03 14:12 UTC
Regarding dragging into libraries, the target folder isn’t a mystery at all. When you configure a library, one folder is designated the default, so copying files to a library, or creating new files happen in that default folder.
The libraries folder also only shows the duplicate folder names when you sort by location. Sorting different ways displays as normal files. This behavior is okay, though, when you actually use Libraries more extensively than what the default settings present itself as.
I seemed to recall that this was configurable. However it still doesn’t change the fact that there is no indication at the time of copying as to where it’s going, and it remains a mystery for anyone who has never explored the configuration options.
if you are using libraries to copy the file, then presumably you will use the library to access the file again so the physical location is meaningless if you have made sure to set it up correctly so as not to store any files on your 60 gig SSD or something.
I think they have ran out of ideas with explorer and have made it worse since XP.
What I don’t like is how they arbitrarily hide information in an attempt to simplify the interface.
It’s still usable but explorer and windows media player are both cases where they should have left the original interface alone. WMP should only be used as an example of how not to design an interface.
search much?
One thing that explorer does about an infinity times (yes I know that is a nonsense term) better than XP explorer is search…. even with all the indexed search tools that came out in the waining years of XP.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that WMP is a disaster. Speaking of media players, on those occasions that I have to use Windows I have a really hard time finding a good audio player. WMP is obviously out of the question. QMP used to be good but recent versions is just a gigantic “WTF?” and there seems to be about a billion awfull iTunes wannabees. The only one I find even remotely usable is Foobar 2000 and it’s not even that good.
What about VLC ? It has slowly grown to be my personal favorite on both Windows and Linux.
Edited 2011-04-04 06:16 UTC
As a video player yes. as an audio player…not really.
What are the issues you have ?
I’m a picky bastard, that’s my problem. I like Amarok and Clementine and I can’t find anything like those on Windows.
Can’t help you there indeed, these are not my cup of tea.
Maybe the KDE on Windows packages might be of some help?
Amarok is available as part of the KDE-on-Windows project. Haven’t used it a lot, but it worked the few times I tried it.
Clementine on Windows would be awesome. It’s pretty much the perfect audio player for people who just listen to music.
I can’t stand “music players” that download album art, group bios, group websites, etc etc etc. I want to play my music, not read about my music. 
Hot diggity, it’s now available for Windows: http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/downloads/detail?name=Cl…
No idea how well it works.
Hmmm I’m probably not one to ask since I never feel motivated enough to try the bazillion media players that are out there.
Songbird is pretty good but the startup time is a little slow.
The Zune media player is worth looking at if you are tired of itunes and *amp clones. Oddly enough one of the better alternatives to WMP is made by MS.
New Windows Media player is a hell of a lot better than the versions before it. The new one is pretty good and the decluttered the UI a lot. It also feels part of the OS.
I still don’t use it …
The Zune Media player is supposed to be amazing … haven’t used it yet.
(Win 7) I just tried the select a folder on the left and right click a file on the right and I am not seeing the behavior you describe.
I just discovered that it only seems to happen when you right-click the white space to the right of the file name. This area is highlighted on mouse hover and left-clicking it works fine too, so this is clearly a bug.
Edited 2011-04-04 00:10 UTC
I like some things about the W7 Explorer, but I have my gripes too:
* It no longer shows the folder in the title bar. There is simply a gigantic chunk of blank space at the top of the window. Where does it come from? What does it want from us? Is it hostile?
* The ^aEURoeLinks^aEUR pane was useful in Vista as a quick way for me to access some of my most frequently-used folders. Come Windows 7, and the corresponding ^aEURoeFavorites^aEUR window is no longer anchored in place; if I want to actually use it, I have to first scroll up through the five screens^aEURTM worth of folders I have open in the left pane. Thanks, guys!
* Grouping is nigh-useless now. I like to group files by type. In Vista, you could use the label of a group to perform actions on the entire group (by bringing up the context menu, dragging it, etc.). In 7, if you^aEURTMve selected a group using the label, tough! You have to deselect it then reselect the actual files.
* I also wish that I could see the disk statistics at the bottom of the window like in XP^aEUR| I^aEURTMm not sure why disk space is suddenly irrelevant just because we have more of it.
A ribbon in Explorer could be a good thing, if it means they are going to either add a whole host of new file operations to be available to the UI, and make some hidden ones more accessible.
If there’s a button to toggle display of hidden/system files without burying it deep in a menu, that’s reason enough.
As a very satisfied Windows Phone 7 user
So you’re the one!
the UI and development environment is actually fantastic… the execution of the hardware platform has sucked big time.
Edited 2011-04-03 23:15 UTC
I know people already complaining about the complete lack of business class or ability to modify the Win7 welcome screen. They really think that turning it into a home user image display makes thing better? I hope they at least enable some theming so business users can have something a little less toy’ish.
since when has a solid grey and square UI meant business?
Seriously… if I am working in windows 7 at work, I want my buttons and my jump lists to be default win 7 experience. They are a huge productivity increase. the win 7 UI has streamlined windows so that it stays out of your way when you are working.
After a year or using KDE (kubuntu) I cant bring my self to care how what happens in Windows. Ribbon and Windows 7 just show that Microsoft has successfully copied Apples reality distortion field.
Objectively; Ribbon is unavoidably MODAL, just like OS X (when using more than one program), and therefore BAD interface. What ever small usability improvement they get from having big targets for clicking (Fitt’s Law) is irrelevant when users have to switch modes all the time.
I don’t quite understand that claim. Windows 7 sure is a good step up from WinXP or Vista and having used it for almost a year now I don’t feel anything drawing me to Linux anymore. There’s just very few precious things to complain about. While for example Vista introduced many of the things that 7 also has incorporated Microsoft really did see an effort in trying to polish them.
I’ve been the opposite. Win7/Debian on the notebook and I pretty much boot to Win7 for updates monthly else I’m over on the Debian side. I probably use the WinXP VM more often than Win7 when I need to test a user reported issue, new software update or make use of one of the few work required win32 apps.
We’ll see how it goes with my home desktop though. I want DX10+ and access to the full amount of ram in the box. I also don’t really learn an OS until I have it on my own hardware and reinstalled a few times. Once past the initial learning curve, it may get relegated to running Windows only games. I don’t personally see it becoming my primary desktop OS for home given how I use my preferred Linux distro; it’s about what I run on top of the OS more than the kernel or shell stacked on top.
For my users at work, time will tell as we slowly issue new machines with Win7.
I on the other hand, have only Steam games that make me return to Win7. System>Restart>GRUB:Windows7>Wait a bit>Wait a bit>Wait a bit longer>Click Steam and play games.
Otherwise it’s hard to move from WinXP to Win7.
Well, if you listen to Phoronix, Steam is coming to Linux. Any time now. Maybe.
KDE is NOT the pinnacle of usability by a long shot.
Edited 2011-04-03 23:20 UTC
You seem to care enough to comment on something you supposedly do not care about.
Anything that uses up vertical resolution like this must be given the heave ho.
It might be ok on 4:3 screens but as everything seems to be going widescreen these days(16:9) then this has to be a NO-NO.
Do these guys at MS evey get out of their basements and into the real world? With all these toolbars and not a ribbon there soon won’t be any room on the screen for actual data.
Oh silly me. Perhaps that is what they want all along?
Most widescreen displays are 16:10. I have one, and I make use of it by having several long windows side-by-side rather than wide, vertically-stacked windows. I^aEURTMd rather sacrifice some vertical space than some horizontal space. (Ideally, of course, I wouldn^aEURTMt have to sacrifice any space at all.
Edited 2011-04-04 07:53 UTC
Looks like Microsoft have been taking UI lessons from the blender team.
Blender’s old UI (which I think is what you’re talking about) was pretty nice and easy to understand, once you’ve gone through a tutorial or two, although I have to agree that it’s quite a shocking view at first.
Its big problem was that things were anything but discoverable, making the life of the beginner a pain, but once you know that a feature is around it’s pretty easy to find it, and the UI is quite flexible and adapts itself to your needs.
Edited 2011-04-03 19:37 UTC
When you need to go “through a tutorial or two” the UI is not “easy to understand”. Easy to understand UIs will guide you through themselves and disclose functionality when you need it or when you specifically search for it.
There is a term in UX called “progressive disclosure”. That is where old Blender UI failed. That is why Win7 UI looks confusing in a lot of cases.
You do realise Blender is not a music player, right?
+1. Progressive disclosure only works in software which has a small amount of functionality and is meant to be mainly used by totally unexperienced people. Blender is not in this case.
When I say easy to understand, I mean that there are few, relatively simple basic principles, and you understand rather quickly how things are organized. It’s not like, say, office suites menus (ribbons included), when you regularly spend time looking for things even after having found them once.
Edited 2011-04-03 20:28 UTC
I know, I know… But calling it easy is not true for a novice. It took me an hour to get a texture on my first model, but I was then a bit more cowboy about it and didn’t bother to read tutorials.
Real men don’t press F1, don’t read help or tutorials!
BTW: It is well organised, but not easy…
There is a new interface? I haven’t noticed any changes in a few years now. But I have only been dipping in and out of blender and #! may well have an old version.
This kind of quantum interface where the widgets do different things depending on which of their many states they are in really does my head in.
The biggest problem I have is most of the tutorials are in video form and I have a terrible internet connection that hates youtube with a passion.
more on topic … IMHO if your user has to look up tutorials just to use your file manager’s interface – you’re doing it wrong.
I haven’t used windows in years and am pretty sure I would have to do some reading before I could use this interface.
I also think it’s funny that if you gave a kid who grew up with XP a copy of something like Amiga Workbench from the 80s; I’m almost positive they could intuitively navigate the FS very quickly — im not saying that you cant improve UI design but this seems like a backwards move in UI evolution… I could be wrong though – it’s happened before
Yeah, fairly recently they made the interface better-looking, made some frequently used functionality more discoverable and easier to access by putting it in a panel on the left, integrated search in the menus… It takes a while to get used to after playing with the old version, but all in all I think it’s an improvement.
I also am a casual user of Blender, but the old interface surprised me by how quickly one learns it vs how complicated it looked. Only took me a few weeks to understand the general UI, didn’t expect that.
I hate video tutorials, but for other reasons, and managed to find some textual doc anyway… The “noob to pro” series especially help greatly.
Using WinXP on my work laptop and Ubuntu on my desktop. I already find it complicated and confusing at times using Win7(intuitive my a**), I bet with Win8 I’ll be even more lost…
I mean… Clean and obvious should be their main goal not bells and whistles.
what confuses you about Win 7?
I have used windows since 95 and I had no problem.
you know who complains about win 7? the windows xp Certified guys.
If it takes me less time to open up Google and use their calculator functionality, than opening up one in Win7 – there is a usability problem.
My first reaction to the new Explorer is “OMG! TMI! UI Bloat.”
There is another point, that you’ve been using since Win95 implying that you used Vista. I skipped Vista altogether.
PS: The damn thing still can’t go into sleep mode on my Vista certified desktop…
start, type calc in the search and hit enter. less than 2 seconds.
there is plenty of difference between vista and 7.
the task bar and jump lists being the biggest differences (also the best changes)
If you can’t sleep then it is probably a BIOS setup. I have a q6600 CPU on an Asus P5A motherboard (4 years old) and I have no problems sleeping.
Edited 2011-04-06 01:18 UTC
lol who cares about how Internet Exploder looks anyway?
Exploder is a great tool..
for downloading other browsers
The article is talking about Explorer, not IE. You know, the file manager?
Its quite late here so I didn’t notice. Also, seems like I read news from windows’ side of things a little sloppy compared to other more interesting news.
But hey:
Is there really much of a difference?
I can think of one important one though:
Its a lot more difficult to download and install an alternative file manager than a better web browser.. hehe
Windows users get skrewed hard over and over, and they dont even notice. They even pay for this madness
aptitude install pcmanfm (or thunar …)
or keep it minimalistic, stick with bash
bash FTW!
I could use a graphical file manager in Windows so I can have useful features like icon preview and drag select but I use bash in cygwin to feel special and superior to others. I’m perfectly willing to cut my own productivity for an ego boost.
perhaps you could try powershell too? full access to the file system (rather than isolated to the cygwin directory) and full access to the windows API.
built in ls goodness too
Edited 2011-04-03 23:27 UTC
No doubt that bash is cool
And when using it right you gain productivity instead of losing.
I totally agree when it comes to thumbnails. When looking for some image IMG_012???.png, thumbnails are a wonderful thing and Its good to have pcman command in toolbox
But heck, when searching, combining ‘ls’, ‘locate’, ‘find’ and ‘grep’ does the job a lot better than any “finders” I have tried.
When opening some file, bash is also your friend. Tab-autocompletion on program name and file path will make you able to open a file in pretty much no time at all. No need to “Open as”(sudo
) “Open with” (in case you need another program than whats standard) or waiting for explorer to start (or explode). Ahh and that clicking trough the directory tree.
I’d choose bash autocompletion any day.
With bash you also have a lot of info avialable in a matter of very few keystrokes: top, df -h, free -m, etc etc Wile in a menu based windoze world you would have to click through a endless and illogical menu structure.
Having the “Control Panel” icon acessible isn’t even comparable.
So in my experience, productivity is not lost at all if bash is used right and its few limitations is thought of and taken care of (pcman?)
Since you already use bash Im sure you know all this though
Well Im way off topic now I guess..
Back to the MS Exploder..
win+R for your lives
Real men use command.com (not cmd, that’s for sissy boys) and edlin.
Real men flip bits with magnets.
[sarcasm]I get screwed big time for paying ^Alb100 which works flawlessly for years on end and is updated regularly[/sarcasm]
Get over yourself. I haven’t been screwed on Windows ever … I could still be using the Windows XP license I bought 8 years ago if I wanted to.
Though the Suse Linux 9.2 CDs I bought are now coasters.
I find it funny how MS is slowly making their UI more consistent while Apple is slowly doing the opposite. Love or hate the ribbon interface, at least MS is sticking to it and slowly deploying it across the OS. In Apple’s case what the hell happened to iTunes, Mac Appstore, iCal and Addressbook (in Lion)?
My biggest gripe with XP vs Vista/7 is how convoluted they made things that used to be simple. However I definitely give MS a thumbs up for effort, Windows 7 is their best version yet. Win 8 seems to be building on things nicely. I say this as someone who would never buy a Windows machine, I’m a mac user, but you have to give credit where its due.
I agree. Honestly, when you DO use the Ribbon interface for more than a week, you WILL like it, trust me! I hated it with a passion at first, but after working with it ofr a while, I got used to it and can do things a lot faster now than before.
Give it time, fellas. Sooner or later you will have to use anyway, whether you like it or not. So there.
Going from Word 2003 to Word 2007 at work was such a relief. Finally a version of word where things weren’t hidden in endless hierachies of menus.
This is going to be one of those “controversial” windows decisions…that is’nt worth a long one sided critique.
I’d just be happy for Explorer to remember my bloody folder views and stop being a smartarse, randomly switching to thumbnails in folders that happen to contain a lot of images, etc. Fixing it’s renderer and improving it’s single-click behaviour would be a close second.
The ribbon is an over-engineered mess. It’s good that MS are trying, at least a little, to make the Windows experience more consistent but standardising on something that doesn’t work well to begin with is pointless. I notice also from the leaked screenshots that they’ve stuck crap in the titlebar and statusbar, as well. This is the same crap they pulled with Word 2007 and half the default Win 7 apps: so they can slyly get out of being accused of taking up more screen space, they muddle the widget hierarchy and move toolbar/menuitem widgets to the titlebar and statusbar.
I’d switch to a 3rd party explorer replacement but they’re uniformly terrible, being even more overwrought, or being buggier than Explorer, still.
Let’s call it by the numbers. Wrong, is wrong wrong in concept, and design can only be wrong in implementation. Our screens are generally wider than they are tall, that battle is long done. In places where the screen is taller then wide (i.e. phones) giving up that much space to a “ribbon” is even worse. With all sorts of context switching, and mode switching and duplicated functionality. I cannot prove that the ribbon is ‘always’ worse first because I am subjective in this POV and, also important because if I have to do a product in the “Office” Standard then I will do it in text first and copy\paste into office.
Second-Ugly, ugly and U-G-L-Y without an alibi. I heard that Redmond is now taking it’s design and feature cues from the Office team. Again it is as though designers at The Office team thought I needed More glitter and clutter just so I can get at features that I *might* need, sometimes. I can say the icons look pretty, however if you do not know that it is an icon, or worse than that if users are afraid to click on an icon in the tool bar because it is intimidating\might make a change that you do not understand then that Icon is Ugly.
Counterintuitive If this is what more features are for, if this is the future of computing – The Office Way, then evolution is flowing in the wrong direction. I suspect that people want more access to their data not more access to their tool bar. I suspect that people want quality software that feels good to use and is more like a tool and less like a task. An appendix is vestigial why would I want an app that grows more vestigial organs every major release. Has writing gotten that much more complex since 1995?
This way of implementing the ribbon DOESN’T look like it will work BUT there are ways that microsoft CAN make the ribbon work well in an explorer shell. There is a picture on windows8update.com that show how you can do it and i personally think that this would work better than metro tiles all over my desktop.
http://windows8.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/windows…
Edited 2011-04-04 22:03 UTC
I think my eyes just broke.
You really hate the ribbon dont you. Not that thats a bad thing, everyones entitled to their own opinion, especially in UI design.
Good mockup. Looking at the user’s photo being put next to the trash, I thought for a second that this could indeed be coming from Microsoft.
More seriously… This is just way too crowded for a file explorer.
I didn’t say it didn’t need work, even that mock up has its faults like the over crowdedness issue you pointed out. But it does look better than the microsoft one (nav buttons BELOW the ribbon, seriously) and out of all the proposals that i’ve seen for the ext gen of Explorer its the best.
EVERY blasted new iteration of an OS they feel the need to overhaul something that reached the PINNACLE of usability with XTREE Gold back in the 80’s… or for GUI with Windows 3.0
EVERYTHING since just feels like a bloated slow train wreck and I’m getting sick of turning OFF all these stupid UI “improvements” that just get in my way.
As in “For **** sake, just show me a blasted file tree”, “why is it taking so long to open a directory”, and “god forbid I want to see the ACTUAL file extension”.
Between all this “database driven” bull that NOBODY is going to bother filling out, (and coming from a BeOS fan, I mean “database driven bull”), useless idiocy like spatial navigation — and worst of all bull like this that just adds more and more and more useless crap to the display until you can’t even fit more than four files at a time on the screen…
Well, there’s a reason the FIRST thing I do on a windows system is turn off “hide file extensions”, force the default behavior of the sidebar to “show tree”, turn off “file indexing” as taking too damned long, and force the default behavior of every file listing to “details” and “normal folder” instead of that customized details malarkey…
What, is there something wrong with filename, extension, size and date?
See why I find most non-windows file managers even MORE crippled and useless, since if they don’t show you those things, usually they don’t let you customize them to change that behavior.
They were DONE back on windows 98… LEAVE IT THE **** ALONE! Maybe instead of adding all this bloated slow useless crap, they could optimize it down so that file management isn’t more painful and slow than win 3.0 was on a 286?
Edited 2011-04-04 23:04 UTC
i’m not totally against windows 7 explorer, but a few things are so wrong that it’s kinda sad.
On top of those few is a way that vista/7 handles thumbnails with images and folder.jpg files, in xp that was a great feature, but who could possible change that into this utter disaster, and not only that, after numerous complaints in vista, they dared to leave it that way in win7, unforgivable.