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| "MacOSX's Finder may look more polished...But Vista's Explorer is Kick Ass !" |
Authored By Saurav Srivastava, Microsoft MVP. |
| In Windows Vista, by default the Pictures, Music, Movies, Contact etc are stored in the users own folder. However one can simply change the location of these folders to somewhere else like some other partition & still refer to them at the original location. Suppose one has "my music" on my E:\Drive. All one has to do is to go my user’s folder, right click on the “Music” Folder & change its location to that of E:\ drive. Now all Windows application whether 3rd party or Windows integrated will refer to the new location of E:\Drive. You are not forced to use Windows the default way, you can use it the way you want. You can change the location of Movies Folder, documents & pictures just like this. This comes in handy if you save your data on another hard disk or partition. |
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| You also have some saved searches called “Live Folders”. These are virtual folders which are more like containers which refer to files complying with specific criteria. eg, in you user folder there is a folder names “Searches” which houses some commonly used search terms like “All recent files, made in the last 2 days” & other criteria’s like this. You can also make your own live folder using the Windows Search. Just perform a search & save it. For example, if you search for all files created since Monday to today all I have to do is to go to search panel, select the criteria & save it as a search. Since all the files are indexed, any new file created will be added to this live folder easily. You can simply drag this Live folder to favorite links sidebar for easier access. |
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| One thing enhanced in Windows Vista is the inbuilt preview in Explorer. Now it is called Windows Preview. By default Windows shows thumbnails of all the files it has in a folder such as videos or images. You can simply turn on the Preview function from the organize button found at the top toolbar & now you will be greeted by a simple preview panel in the side of explorer in which you can see the preview of any file. Windows Explorer shows preview of many files such as Video or Audio or Images right there in Explorer itself. You can even play videos in here without opening any media player. The file types that Windows can preview can be extended using plug-ins available. Recently with the release of Adobe Acrobat 8.1 you can preview PDF files in explorer too. You can preview just about any possible file in Explorer as long as the plug-in is installed including but not limited to Microsoft Word, Excel & PowerPoint Slides. |
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| Next to the organize button is the “Views” button which will resize the icons or thumbnails on Explorer in real time. It shows the content of the files up to a preview size of 256X256 pixels. You can easily use a bit display with high resolution & see what a file contains without even opening it. This is more like a Live Thumbnail. |
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| There are different types of views in the Explorer viewport area such as the standard icon view as well as tiles or details or list views. One new enhancement in Explorer is that if you are in a folder having many files then you can simply click on the column at the top of viewport area to sort the files according to criteria as well as show only the files matching particular criteria. For example, you can click on the “Type” tab & select to show only JPG & Word documents & it will hide all the files in that folder other than those matching these file types. You can similarly click on the “Date” tab & select to show the files from a following date only. It makes navigation easier if you need to copy all the image files from a folder where there are many different files, just select to show image files then copy all the files which show up. You can even stack the files & save it as a “Live Folder” |
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| Using the tasks toolbar you can also use the inbuilt CD Burning feature of Windows Vista to burn all the files you require. Help is available right through the tasks toolbar. |
| Let us come to the Windows shell. The Start menu is further streamlined for use with new Windows Vista technologies such as search & live previews. You can search for all files or anything right there from the Start menu “Instant Search” itself. |
| Alt+tab which now called FlipTab also shows preview of all Windows you have open. You can directly click on any thumbnail to jump to that particular window. Windows has a Tasks based approach towards navigation of open windows on screen. If you have five internet explorer Windows open then they show up as five separate entities & you can jump to anyone directly using FlipTab. |
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Taskbar now shows small preview of the Windows opened just by hovering the mouse over them. |
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| It also groups similar windows together which you can navigate to either by clicking on the taskbar button or using FlipTab. |
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| You can customize a folder’s icon by right clicking on it, go to properties, customize tab & select an Icon. |
| Due to new technologies such as Volume Shadow copy, Windows can go to a previous version of your file if you have overwritten it with a new one. After that you can save the old version alongside the new version. If you deleted a file accidentally, well….just use Windows backup & it will be there. |
| Windows Explorer supports full drag & drop. Not only that, if you have multiple files & folders in a folder, you don’t need to keep pressing Control key to select multiple files. Just turn on Checkbox from Tool->Folder Option & now you can simply click on these checkbox & drag & drop or cut-paste the selection at once. When you drag the files together, Explorer shows you a count of selected files |
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| Mac OS X Finder, has several shortcomings, the most notable among them being, that there is no option to cut & paste a file from one place to other. You need to press multiple buttons, even to do a simple task such as deleting a file! The Finder also lacks an address bar. |
| Windows Explorer is just that, Windows Explorer. It lets you manage your files the way you want it to, making your life real easier in the process. YOU are in control ! Do check out the Authors detailed Review of Windows Vista Explorer too ! While the MacOSX's Finder may look more polished; and though both Vista's Explorer & MacOSX's Finder cater to the need of File Management, it’s just that Explorer is Kick Ass ! |
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