Over the years, Explorer and its forerunners have gone through several major iterations:
File Manager in Windows 3.1
Explorer in Windows XP
Explorer in Windows 7
Its a bit daunting but also pretty exciting to have the opportunity to revisit and rethink this cornerstone of our product. Many of you who are reading this are among the most extreme power usersof the file management tools in Explorer and likely start from a different perspective than the broad base of customers. As we approach the work to improve file management in Windows, we do so knowing many of you have long ago given up on Explorer and are using some of the wide variety of add-ons or alternatives.
Explorer in Windows 8
Microsoft has published a very detailed post about the new Explorer in Windows 8. It brings the ribbon interface well known from the latest MS Office packages. Many of you may not like it, but wait until you hear all about it.
The Explorer in Windows 8 brings at front a lot more functions thanks to those ribbons, there are a lot more customizable settings and even some old goodies back from XP are brought once again to life.
According to Microsoft, the new Explorer has three major goals: to optimize the management tasks, to create a streamlined command experience and respect the Explorer heritage. Well, all these sound like a big advertising talk, but it’s not. Those three goals have been taken very seriously to create a better Explorer.
So, the ribbon UI. Many people still disapprove the MS Office ribbons and use older version just to avoid it. I have to admit the ribbon UI is awkward in the beginning, but then you get used to it and starts feeling natural. The new Explorer utilizes exactly the same UI.
The ribbon UI has four tabs that should concern you the most File, Home, Share and View. Clicking on File opens a sub-menu where you find some trivial functions plus Open Command Prompt Menu where you can run the CMD in the current folder as normal user or admin. Thank you, Microsoft, for listening to our requests.
The Home tab hosts almost every of the most important elements of the Explorer Copy, Paste, Cut, Properties, Delete, Rename, etc. Some old fellas return from the past too Move to and Copy to. There are also Copy Path and Paste Shortcut keys. As you can see, the Home tab should be the place for the average Explorer user.
The Share tab allows you to Email, Zip, Print, Fax, Burn to CD and Share things with just one click.
The view tab will spare you the right clicks it hosts all the viewing options from Windows 7 plus switches for navigation and preview panes, groups and columns, file name settings (hide extensions, show hidden files, etc.), Refresh and more.
All those tabs are fully customizable and all functions in there have a dedicated keyboard shortcut (also customizable).
If you think the ribbon UI is a mess, you can rearrange, add or remove items in the tabs, assign them your own shortcuts, so every tab can fit your needs. But there is more you can minimize the ribbon UI in a lot smaller line of shortcuts. It can look much like the previous Windows versions and have all this functions still available for you. This should satisfy those who are not fans on the ribbon UI.
There are additional tabs that appear at some occasions picture files, libraries, etc.
I mentioned something about panes above in the View tab. There are three of them navigation (the left one), preview and details. The preview on details are now on the right instead at the bottom (as in Windows Vista/7) and show all the available file info. This way Microsoft fully utilizes the wide aspect screens.
Have you have ever heard about the Quick Access Toolbar? It includes a few small shortcuts at the very top left corner of a window. For example the QAT in Office 2010 has Save, Undo and Redo shortcuts by default. The Explorer 8 offers the a QAT in every window. Its fully customizable too, you can add whatever you want there.
One last thing, the Up key is back.
