File management and folder navigation are all new in Vista, with a complete Explorer revamp. The results—with a little tweaking—are mostly welcome.

The most fundamental change is a de-emphasis on the traditional hierarchical Windows folder structure. While the old folder tree is still there, albeit rearranged, there’s no need to spend your time digging down through layer upon layer of sub-folders. Instead, Vista’s turbo-charged search capabilities combined with its new navigation tools encourage you to jump quickly from one location to another and even to ignore folders and filenames and focus, instead, on content and tasks.

Visual guide to the new Explorer

A visual tour of the new Explorer. (Click the image to see a full-sized screenshot.)

The removal of the Pictures, Music and Video folders from within Documents is one indication of this change. No longer is “My” Documents the central repository for your files; instead you have a series of task-oriented folders spreading out from your username folder.

Breadcrumb navigation

Probably the most welcome innovation is breadcrumb navigation. Breadcrumb navigation transforms how you get from one place to another.

The breadcrumb bar appears at the top of each Explorer window. It provides a quick visual reminder of the route you followed to get to your current location. That route is not the same as the pathname, with which we’re used to dealing in earlier versions of Windows and its predecessor, DOS.

The breadcrumb bar

Jump quickly to any location using the breadcrumb bar.

For example, consider Jessie’s computer. It’s on a home network, the computer name is Vistaraptor and its C: drive, where Vista is installed and Jessie’s data stored, has the volume label Dataraptor. In Jessie’s Documents folder is a sub-folder called Reports.

Now, depending on how Jessie accesses the Reports folder, her breadcrumb bar might display:

Computer > Dataraptor (C:) > Users > Jessie > Documents > Reports

or

Network > VISTARAPTOR > Documents > Reports

or, simply

Jessie > Documents > Reports

The old DOS-style pathname to that same folder, by the way, is:

C:\Users\Jessie\Documents\Reports

You can display this old-style pathname by clicking the icon on the left of the breadcrumb bar.

Click any of the “crumbs” in the breadcrumb bar to jump straight to that location. Click the small arrow to the right of any crumb to display a drop-down list of sub-folders, with the currently selected sub-folder highlighted.

You’ll need to spend a little time learning how to use the breadcrumb bar, but it’s worth the investment.

Command bar

The old menu bar has been displaced by a new, context-sensitive command bar. The menu bar is still available—just tap Alt to display it, or turn it on permanently via Tools Menu -> Folder Options -> View tab -> Always Show Menus—but many of its functions are duplicated on the Organize and Views options of the command bar.

The command bar contains many of the functions formerly found in the task pane. The bar morphs from one folder to another, although each folder sports Organize and Views menus. In Computer Explorer, the command bar displays:

in addition to Organize and Views. In Music Explorer, the options are:

In Games Explorer, it’s:

and so on.

From the Organize menu you can use the Layout option to display or hide various parts of the Explorer windows, such as the details and preview panes. One of Vista’s annoyances is that you can’t change all these options in one go; instead, you must click Organize -> Layout repeatedly.

geekgirl.tip: Multi-file checkbox selection
If you find selecting multiple files using Ctrl+Click cumbersome, turn on Vista’s checkbox selection method:
  1. Tap Alt to display the menu bar.
  2. Click Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab -> Use Check Boxes To Select Items.

The checkboxes will appear when you click a file.

You can also click the checkbox beside the name column header to quickly select all files in a folder; it’s then a simple matter to click any file’s checkbox to deselect it.

Navigation pane

Down the left of the Explorer window, where once we had the task pane, there’s now a navigation pane. It consists of Favorite Links displayed above a folder list. You can hide the folder list by clicking the small arrow at its top, and this is something you’ll probably want to do once you become accustomed to using the breadcrumb bar. By hiding that list, you’ll create more room for the Favorites Links.

The Favorites Links themselves are a backward step from the XP version. Instead of context-sensitive links, the Favorites are static. That’s not particularly useful, so it’s fortunate that you are able to customise them. To do that, simply drag any folder from the Explorer window or Folders list into the Favorite Links. Then resize the list by dragging the divider between Favorites and Folders or hide the Folders list entirely.

Details pane

The details pane across the bottom of Explorer windows replaces the minimally useful details box which was housed in the old task pane. Unlike its unimpressive predecessor, the details pane is highly functional. It displays a thumbnail image and information about the currently selected folder or file and, for files which support editable properties, lets you add tags, modify authors and edit other available properties. As with the other panes, the details pane is easily resized by dragging its divider bar.

By selecting a bunch of files of the same filetype, you can use the details pane to add tags or change the properties of a group of files.

geekgirl.tip
When you use the Details pane to add tags to files or change file properties, remember to press Enter or click the Save button after you’re done, or you’ll lose your edits, something that’s distressingly easy to do.

Preview pane

The preview pane appears on the right, although it’s hidden by default in most folders. Make it visible via Organize -> Layout -> Preview Pane.

In the Pictures Explorer it displays a preview of the image. By dragging the divider to enlarge the pane, you can roughly simulate the old Filmstrip view, which is no longer with us.

In the Music Explorer the preview pane displays simple music player controls, allowing you to hear a track without launching Windows Media Player.

In Contacts Explorer, you’ll see details of the selected contact; and in Games Explorer you’ll see a summary of the performance rating required to run a game versus the performance rating of your computer.

Sadly, there’s no support for previewing PDFs, Web pages, Word documents (even with the Word 2007 option to save a thumbnail enabled) and most other documents.

Document views

So much for the peripheral components of Explorer windows. At Explorer’s centre, of course, are your files and folders.

Vista gives you seven ways to view them:

You can switch between six of these views by clicking the Views button on the command bar. For some reason, you can’t get to the Extra Large Icons view this way; instead you’ll have to click the arrow beside the Views button and select Extra Large Icons directly.

If you do that, you’ll notice a slider control. The slider gives you finer control over the resizing of icons so, in effect, you have more than seven views available (a total of 38, for those of you who care). You can also control the views by holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling your mouse wheel.

The views slider

The Views slider gives fine control over icon size. (Click for a larger image.)

The larger icon views are particularly useful in folders containing images, audio folders with album art, and in folders containing Word 2007 documents with embedded thumbnail images.

Vista also gives you live folder previews, replacing XP’s standard folder icons with icons which display a glimpse of the actual content within. Once again, this works best with folders containing photos, album art and documents with embedded thumbnails.

File organisation

A subtle change you may not notice at first is that column headers are displayed in all of the different folder views, not merely in details view. This means you can quickly sort any file display by clicking one of the column headers. In fact, sorting is only the start of your file organisation options.

The impact of Vista’s organisational strengths is more obvious if you switch to details view in a folder. Click a column header to sort your files by that column. Right-click any column header and choose More from the pop-up menu to add other columns to the display.

There’s nothing new in that, of course, but you’ve only just begun.

Now mouse over a header and click the down arrow which appears when you do so. You’ll see a collection of options, including Sort, Group, Filter and Stack. Grouping divides the file listing into categories.

For example, if you group by size, small files will be displayed together, then medium sized ones and finally large ones. You can group by file name, tags, rating (for pictures and audio clips, and any other column heading.

Filtering hides all files except those which match the filter you’ve selected. The clever thing about filtering is that the filtering options displayed are tailored on the fly to match the current folder’s contents.

For example, if you’re viewing a folder full of photos to which you’ve added the tags family, friends and colleagues, when you click the Tags header arrow you’ll have the option to filter by any of those three tags.

geekgirl.tip
Get yourself a wheeled mouse and a keyboard with a Windows key (WinKey). Vista takes advantage of both, and it will boost your productivity on the Web and in applications, too.

Stacking files is similar to grouping them, in that it lets you lump files of a particular type together. But instead of listing all your files in categorised groups, when you stack a folder similar files are “piled” on top of one another, resulting in a stack of files for each category.

For example, if you stacked the photo folder just mentioned, you’d end up with three stacks, labelled family, friends and colleagues. Unlike groups, though, this stacked “view” of your files does not persist when you close the folder. Instead, you’ll see that each stack displays the telltale blue icon indicating it represents a search folder. That means you can click a stack, click Save Search in the command bar and then, at any time, revisit that stack, with its updated contents, via the Searches folder.

© 2007  Rose Vines

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