alt Hacker NewsThis reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs called "C:\folder\sub1\...", while the rest of the row is EMPTY SPACE (which I, admittedly can still use to drag the window around; thank you for that, but it will probably be filled with ADS come next month.)
"Oh, but you can just see the folder name in the address bar in the next row instead then!"
NO I CAN'T. Because they electron-css-screwed that up too.. It now shows a bunch of toolbar buttons <- -> ^ , then a computer screen??, then >, then [...] Then they truncate the file path to only show parts of it, starting the rest with ... Is it because we are out of space? I don't know, every part of the folder path has been separated with [ > ] (because / or \ was obviously the worst idea ever.) Then, to the right of it all, we get a big [Search log ] edit field, followed by a spyglass. So, I get two broken displays of the actual folder path, and a lot of 'candy' I did not ask for. Why does the search tool need so much space, before I am using it at all? What does it need, apart from maybe the single spyglass icon? Instead, the actual path that my object by necessity ALWAYS will have, has been chopped up to unrecognisability.
It reeks of KPI and bonus performance reviews, "we must improve the round shape of the wheel, to get our bonus and not be downsized".
Replies
> Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs
Hey now! The `nautilus' file browser on linux got me hooked on tabs and for years it's been a glaring deficiency of File Explorer. Many tasks involve a collection of directories, and tabs can be ideal for reducing demand for screen space.
I concede the the current Windows implementation is poor but I hope they improve it, rather than dumping tabs entirely.
The tabs are fine. Tabs in "cmd" are also good.
The window handles, on the other hand .. this was correct in Windows 3.0 and there's basically no good reason to have changed it. There should be a title bar. Active window should have visibly contrasting title bar. There should be sufficient grab space all round a window to get hold of it.
Bonus points: move your mouse pointer very slowly around a bottom curved corner window handle on Windows 11. Ask yourself: how well does "place I am pointing at" line up with "where the curve is"?
>Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs
Speak for yourself. Tabs in file explorer and notepad are my favorite windows feature in decades. I can't believe it took them this long.
You can pull the File Explorer tabs from my cold, dead hands!
Also, I'm pretty sure the tabs were WinUI/XAML based, not WebView2 based. There are some "Electron" (i.e. web tech stack) components in File Explorer these days but I don't think most of the things you're complaining about are part of that.
Some related things I noticed just today:
- the close button in outlook is HIDDEN until you move the window
- in Gdrive they list the selected filename at the bottom. They have the entire page width to show the file name. It truncates at like 70px.
The problem with Windows is the users aren't the buyers, so they don't matter.
I hate Windows 11 immensely. At home I use Mac, Linux and... Windows 7. But at my current client I have to use Windows 11. I have no choice; I can either accept that or leave.
So at this point Windows could send small electrical shocks with every keystroke, it would not make a difference whatsoever.
Tabs and breadcrumbs are both useful features though, that almost every other OS/DE file manager has supported since forever
Every time I was forced to use Windows 7, file browser tabs are something I missed dearly from Linux. But now that I'm forced to use Windows for work almost every day, I find that I almost never use file browser tabs on Windows. No idea why. The tabs show only the dirname, which is what I would want the tabs to do. The UX is mostly okay.
Not being able to grab the top left of the window and drag feels really strange. Plenty of apps encroach on the top bar, but they almost never encroach on the top left. That's where the icon lives, that's the sacred "move the window" space.
Slack has the same problem (hamburger menu in the top left captures clicks, plus a giant search bar in the center) and it's bothersome. But with Slack I don't notice it because I don't really move Slack around. It's permanently maximized on a secondary display. I move Explorer windows around constantly, so I notice it.
Aside from the other problems the emergent trend of shoehorning window level tabs into apps kind of indicates a failure of OS level window management.
If people really want tabs in everything then have the windows enable tabbing between multiple contained apps.
I was really excited when I saw tabs were coming to the file explorer, but I can't tell now if I don't like tabs in file explorer or if I don't like all the other things that made file explorer worse when tabs got added
Maybe "don't ruin stuff" should be a KPI
Join those of us using File Pilot.
It's still fairly early days, but it's SCREAMING fast and I find it very intuitive to use. :)
Lots of customization and power, but the defaults are all quite reasonable.
> so I now have tabs called "C:\folder\sub1\..."
This is the most idiotic thing I've heard today, who UAT'd this? Does Windows even bother having a UAT team? If they have a QA / UAT phase in their process for Windows they need to fire everyone and build a new UAT team for Windows, this is getting so ridiculous it hurts.
Meanwhile I'm enjoying both Mac and Linux daily.
Tabs are great, especially in laptops.
Modern Explorer is a WinUI/UWP app, nothing to do with Electron, it could be worse.
every day i am more glad i cannot update to 11 because windows 10 seems to be better in every way
Tabs on file explorer is one of the most useful feature updates in Win 11.
I can understand companies other than Microsoft using Electron because of the byzantine APIs required to make a native GUI app in Windows. But why would Microsoft do this? Have they forgotten how to use their own software??
Wait, never mind. Stupid question.
I tried win 11 for 11 minutes and switched to Linux and never looked back.
>I don't need tabs
I do use tabs in Explorer quiet frequently.
Meanwhile I've been happily using ls, find, grep like it is 1980s.
They still work exactly the same, and now even my agents can do it.
Imagine if agents attempted to use explorer, even powershell seems like it is confusing enough.
Of the things that you could complain about modern Explorer and Notepad, you choose tabs? Really? A handy QoL feature that many have been requesting?
A little while ago I ran Windows XP in a VM, inside Windows 10.
I noted that when I pressed the start key, the start menu opened.
I noted that when I pressed Win+E, an explorer window opened.
Fully rendered. After a single video frame.
On Windows 10, the same thing happens, only several hundred milliseconds later, and then you get to enjoy watching the UI elements get painted in one at a time.
Twenty years of progress.