On Microsoft’s Building Windows 8 Blog Steven Sinofsky details the changes in Windows Explorer and highlights the new ribbon interface which is going to be a main feature in Explorer. In the blog post Microsoft justify the changes, explaining that the Home Tab contains most of the major file management commands making up 84% of the commands that users want.
The share tab exposes most of the common tasks used in when sharing files, the View and Manage tab again have most of the common options.
Here is the UI from Mac OS X Lion
At first glance the Windows 8 UI seems overly complicated and pretty cluttered but it does make it commands easy to find for a new user. The ribbon has been a success in Microsoft Office and I expect to see it all over Windows 8. Microsoft look to going the opposite way to Apple which seems to be trying to simplify the UI and at this stage its hard to say who is right but I can say the UI is very mouse centric and not touch friendly at all. It also takes up a lot of screen real estate which could be an issue on small devices.
Until we get are hands on Windows 8 its going to be hard to say whether the changes are for the better or a step backwards, what do you think?
7 thoughts on “Windows Explorer in Windows 8 a step forward or a step back?”
“but I can say the UI is very mouse centric and not touch friendly at all. It also takes up a lot of screen real estate which could be an issue on small devices.”
I expect the desktop shell and tablet/touch shells to be completely seperate and very different.
There will, no doubt, be a different Windows Explorer in touch mode.
Personally , im not fussed. Hated it at first in office 2007 , got used to it. Like it in the Windows Live tools.
It spends most of its time collasped for me in those applications, so I dont see what the big deal is.
It will be fine , and we’ll look back on this as ‘ i used to like my boring , plain drop down menus ‘ in the same way we used to complain about how we all loved the .ini files when the registry came in 🙂
“UI is very mouse centric and not touch friendly at all. It also takes up a lot of screen real estate which could be an issue on small devices.
Really helps if you read an entire article before commenting on it.. 🙂
They specificaly show that it takes up less real estate than today’s Explorer. With pictures even, and that is before collapsing the ribbon. So on “small devices” it should be better than what is there today.
As for it being “very Mouse centric”, yes again, he specifically states that while it lends itself to touch a little better than the Explorer today it is not designed as a touch UI as the traditional desktop is going to stay the traditional desktop expereince for this version with the touch experience being the Metro UI they have previewed.
Personally, I think that the system of Windows Xp was one of the best i have ever laid a hand on. Vista, (Besides all the Major and small bugs) looked like it was one of the best, sleek and almost flawlessly organized. with Windows Se7en, I was disgusted with the taskbar, it was basicly a smaller desktop, fading, and the icons were the same size as the desktop, so what was the point of having one? (Remember that these are first impressions people) Now that I see windows 8, I can’t Help but wonder what the future of Pc’s hold… Because even though Mac’s have many interesting features and uses, Pc’s are (Personally) more my type.
What i want to know, is how will they be changing the taskbar, the help and search menus, and of course, the explorer window.
Overall, my hype for Windows 8 leaves me practically in tears. not knowing is probably the hardest thing for me…
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“but I can say the UI is very mouse centric and not touch friendly at all. It also takes up a lot of screen real estate which could be an issue on small devices.”
I expect the desktop shell and tablet/touch shells to be completely seperate and very different.
There will, no doubt, be a different Windows Explorer in touch mode.
There is a little arrow to collapse the view and take up less real estate.
Looks like a mess to me never did like those ribbon menus.
I don’t know what any of those OSX buttons do.
Personally , im not fussed. Hated it at first in office 2007 , got used to it. Like it in the Windows Live tools.
It spends most of its time collasped for me in those applications, so I dont see what the big deal is.
It will be fine , and we’ll look back on this as ‘ i used to like my boring , plain drop down menus ‘ in the same way we used to complain about how we all loved the .ini files when the registry came in 🙂
“UI is very mouse centric and not touch friendly at all. It also takes up a lot of screen real estate which could be an issue on small devices.
Really helps if you read an entire article before commenting on it.. 🙂
They specificaly show that it takes up less real estate than today’s Explorer. With pictures even, and that is before collapsing the ribbon. So on “small devices” it should be better than what is there today.
As for it being “very Mouse centric”, yes again, he specifically states that while it lends itself to touch a little better than the Explorer today it is not designed as a touch UI as the traditional desktop is going to stay the traditional desktop expereince for this version with the touch experience being the Metro UI they have previewed.
Personally, I think that the system of Windows Xp was one of the best i have ever laid a hand on. Vista, (Besides all the Major and small bugs) looked like it was one of the best, sleek and almost flawlessly organized. with Windows Se7en, I was disgusted with the taskbar, it was basicly a smaller desktop, fading, and the icons were the same size as the desktop, so what was the point of having one? (Remember that these are first impressions people) Now that I see windows 8, I can’t Help but wonder what the future of Pc’s hold… Because even though Mac’s have many interesting features and uses, Pc’s are (Personally) more my type.
What i want to know, is how will they be changing the taskbar, the help and search menus, and of course, the explorer window.
Overall, my hype for Windows 8 leaves me practically in tears. not knowing is probably the hardest thing for me…