
Windows Explorer Through the Years - kleff
https://gekk.info/articles/explorer.html
======
vbezhenar
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.

~~~
cstuder
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
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.

~~~
ygra
Shift right click has always been the way to get the "advanced" context menu.
Well, at least back to Windows 95. Fun fact: since the shortcut for the
context menu is Shift+F10, you'll always get the extended menu since you'll
always have shift pressed when the menu appears.

~~~
pjc50
Did not know that! I've always used the "menu key" for keyboard access to the
context menu instead.

~~~
viewer5
Looks like shift+menu key does the same thing, too

------
ubercow13
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.

~~~
mkl
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
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
Hm, you are right!

------
ptidhomme
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).

~~~
Joeri
I get a sense the ribbon design is a bit aspirational, with emphasis on the
things they think you should use instead of what is actually used. For
example, I’m sure they feel you should be using styles instead of fonts, and
so the styles control takes up a lot more real estate than the font chooser.

~~~
WorldMaker
Some of the Ribbon Designs are aspirational, but also some of the Ribbon
Designs are simply telemetry-based, with an emphasis on the things users do
most. I'm rarely surprised how many people complaining that the things they
use most aren't well emphasized are also among the first to disable telemetry.

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).

------
dfox
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"...).

~~~
Lammy
What about “Libraries”? I could never tell quite what they were trying to do.

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

------
wronex
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.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
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
In Windows, you can just copy the file path from Explorer and paste it into
the save file dialog.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
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....

------
accrual
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
Floating windows in floating windows, I can't believe I forgot that was ever a
thing.

~~~
Jaruzel
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
FYI: deprecate [0]

[0]
[https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/deprecate)

~~~
Jaruzel
FYI: depreciated [0] :)

[0]
[https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deprecia...](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/depreciated)

~~~
bmn__
Yes, that's the wrong word. Please note the difference in usage.

~~~
Jaruzel
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

~~~
vinw
But deprecated doesn't mean it's "been removed". If I understand what you were
originally trying to say, then deprecated is a better fitting word than
depreciated because that is a financial term. Whereas deprecated is a common
software term meaning exactly what you said "it's still there and it still
works [...] but no longer see value in it's function".

------
open-source-ux
_" Windows 98 was famously controversial, at least in nerd circles, for the
integration of Internet Explorer into Explorer itself"_

How interesting to see attitudes change. Today, using a web browser and
HTML/CSS/JavasScript to write your app (whether as a SaaS app or a desktop app
using Electron) is one of the most popular options for creating apps.

In fact, Microsoft explored this space many years ago too. Remember Microsoft
Money 2000? A desktop app with an interface akin closer to a web page than a
traditional desktop GUI. Microsoft called it Inductive User Interface:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/win32/appuistart/in...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/win32/appuistart/inductive-user-interface)

~~~
grandchild
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.)

~~~
forgotpwd16
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
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...

------
vishnuharidas
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!

------
axegon_
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
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
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
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
_> > 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.

~~~
basch
For anyone looking for a Norton Commander / File Cabinet two pane interface,
check out Saladin. [https://saladin.mimec.org/](https://saladin.mimec.org/)

------
Sharlin
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
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.

------
frou_dh
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
The best viewing mode is detailed.

Everything else should be regulated out of existence.

</rant>

~~~
speedgoose
The best view to sort pictures !

------
lqet
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
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.

------
skrause
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
You can still do that.

------
cryo
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
Okay I absolutely love this!

~~~
cryo
Thanks :) it's very limited yet compared to other file managers but will
hopefully gain more features soon.

------
p4bl0
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.

~~~
Sharlin
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.

------
cosmodisk
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
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)

------
richard_todd
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.

------
CrlNvl
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

------
mschuetz
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.

------
helenius
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-e...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/win32/shell/shell-exts) [2]:
[https://filemark.app/](https://filemark.app/) [3]:
[https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell](https://github.com/dwmkerr/sharpshell)

------
siggen
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....

~~~
AnonC
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)

~~~
dingaling
It was very much an attempted solution to a self-made problem. Default toolbar
config in Office programs had become so overwhelming that on a 1024x800
standard-issue corporate monitor you could literally see only a paragraph of
text in the content area.

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.

~~~
WorldMaker
> The very concept of a toolbar probably needed to be challenged.

Uh, that's exactly what the Ribbon did? It challenged the ideas of a
traditional toolbar by going back to first principals far enough to the point
where traditional toolbar stalwarts hate it on sight.

Half the reason we have debates about the Ribbon is precisely because it
challenged the very concept of a toolbar.

------
oblio
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
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
like menubars, the toolbars give you the short cuts when you hover over them.

------
teddyuk
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.

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

~~~
rzzzt
Treat yourself on the many takes of file explorer designs:
[https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer](https://dribbble.com/tags/file_explorer)

------
fortran77
Windows 3.1 was so beautiful. Why can't we have pretty UI anymore?

------
interestica
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.

------
snarfy
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
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"

------
waiseristy
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!

------
edwinyzh
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"?

------
chinathrow
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
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
>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

~~~
MayeulC
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.

~~~
RMPR
Seems like ranger-autojump[0] is what you're looking for

0: [https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump](https://github.com/fdw/ranger-
autojump)

------
michalf6
There’s an interesting article about ADHD on authors website:
[https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html](https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html)

------
tangue
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
Could not agree more. Finder is a mess. Explorer just gets the job done.

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

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

~~~
omegabravo
Enter to rename gets me every time.

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

------
6c696e7578
Still not as good as Thunar.

Or XTree Gold/ZTree

~~~
ubercow13
I like Thunar, but what particular features of Thunar are better?

~~~
6c696e7578
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.

