Which Windows folder view do you use?

Since Windows 95 (or at least as far as I could remember) the default folder view is always set to “Icons” (or “Tiles”). But with tears in my eyes I ask you this: WHY? Oh, WHY not default it to “Details”? It is for me (and I’m sure for most programmers and power users out there) the best folder view!

So how does my fellow 9’ers feel about this? What “default” folder view do you prefer?

 

PS: I’m only a month old in the 9’er community, so could someone please tell me also how I could post this to “The Poll”?

I like WinXP's Tile-view. You get large icons, the title, and extra info (type, size). I'm sorry, but only the C9 guys can post polls.

I use Tiles for most things, Details for folders with a lot of files in them (so I can more easily sort).

Thumbnails only get used on picture folders and List is never used.

I'm a coder and wouldn't want to have a Detailed view in every folder, those little icons are harder to click on compared to Tiles.

list view

details - wastes too much space - straight across bla bla bla - dont need to see when created/modified

icons - ok for some folders

thumbnails - ok for pictures - unless you are looking at 2500 thumnails - = list view

the tiles view should be removed

a   b   c   d 

e    f   g   h

ridiculous

List rules

a      d

b      e

c      f
 
Experiment:  open your windows fonts folder and try every view (assuming you have alot of fonts) the only workable view is list view

this is notable as vista has REMOVED list view - yet keeps it for the font folder
haha -- eeediots

* another thread on list view:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=64128#64128

Screenshots:
http://www.channel9.ca/longhorn/listview/

I use details in most folders, tiles in My Documents, thumbnails in My Pictures and list in folders like System32...

Details every time. I'm a coder, and hate tiles

Sometimes with a dir full of images I'll use thumbnails.

 

 

win 2003 comes with details as default view , being used to it i find it better even on xp . but for pictures its still thumbnails

Tensor wrote:

Sometimes with a dir full of images I'll use thumbnails.

Can we agree that 9x's thumbnail view is better than XPs?

3 reasons:

a) When in thumbnail view, a 16x16 icon of the filetype is shown in the lower-right hand corner allowing you to see what type of image it is, this is removed in XP
b) When clicking an image in non-thumbnail view, a thumbnail appears in the taskpane, this isn't the case in XP
c) When clicking a video in non-thumbnail view, a "mini-movie" appears in the taskpane, this isn't the case in XP

W3bbo wrote:

b) When clicking an image in non-thumbnail view, a thumbnail appears in the taskpane, this isn't the case in XP
c) When clicking a video in non-thumbnail view, a "mini-movie" appears in the taskpane, this isn't the case in XP

Yes it is. Both of these happen in XP for me. In fact, point C has been the cause of many an explorer crash for me.

The only time it doesn't show a preview of the picture / video is when it's located on a network drive.

Manip wrote:

I use Tiles for most things, Details for folders with a lot of files in them (so I can more easily sort).

Thumbnails only get used on picture folders and List is never used.

Same.

I use details view, sorted by last modified. For every, and I mean every single folder.

Sort by last modified is a very good default to have.

DevilsRejection wrote:

I use details view, sorted by last modified. For every, and I mean every single folder.

Same here, every single folder is details view.  Which brings me to my pet peeve:  When ANY other application allows me to choose a file, the view is that silly 'list view' which means that I have to change it it to details so I can sort and find the file I want.

Every

Single

Time

Day

In

Day

Out

And since I went through the trouble of forcing every folder to display in details view, it's a tad bit annoying.

details on every folder

 Hide extensions of known file types turned off.  Why on earth are extension hidden by default.  with extensions turned off it a real pain to change a files extension.  I change the extensions all the time from MYFiles.XXX to MyFiles.BAK or MYFILES.BAK2...

I've always used List view.  When dealing with thousands of files this is the best imo.  Its a quick switch over to Detailed view if I need to sort something by date, or album title..  But other then that.  I prefer as many filenames on the screen with minimal scrolling..  If List View isn't included in Longhorn, I don't understand the reasoning behind that at all.  Take away functions we have all used for years? Ouch.

Details showing every last possible thing.

Thumbnails all the way....

I mostly work with some graphics...anything else I know what and where it is at so I could care less about the details. But I want to know if header.jpg, header.html, header.png, and maybe header.png can be viewed in different applications or what they are "associated" with. Thumbnail shows me that.

Plus I am supposed to wear glasses...so having large icons helps.