yet another vista annoyance

since old days of windows im used to all folders being in the "list" view

but it seems vista cant remember the settings i apply to all folders! why?

Folder & Search options > View tab > apply to all folders

works fine on XP but no vista has to be retarded


please help, this behavior is highly annoying and counterintuitive
seems the Vista UI team went out of their way to cause people to lose productivity

Note "Apply to all folders of this type"...

In Vista (and partially in XP) we have the concept of a folder type. So, when you change the view in a Document-type folder, music and picture folders will not change.

You can see the folder type by right clicking on a folder and go to the Customize tab. The first control will let you choose the template to be used for this folder.

I don't know if there is a way to change the folder type for all folders...

interesting, i see

how many folder types are there in vista?

oh theres another thing i noticed regarding the UI

*the up button is missing <-- ok i got over this one now but its bit confusing for old windows users moving to vista

*i have an folder called XYZ now when i go into the folder i want to give the file inside the same name as the folder so naturally enough i go to the address bar liek i did for years with xp and copy the name of the folder then i try to rename the file to the same FOLDERNAME + EXTENSION but it seems in vista for whatever reason the FOLDERNAME does not get stored on the clipboard? it seems to happen when theres an .iso file in the folder

cornelius wrote:

interesting, i see

how many folder types are there in vista?

I believe the list is extensible. If you want to be sure, hunt down and manually edit the desktop.ini files.

cornelius wrote:



oh theres another thing i noticed regarding the UI

*the up button is missing <-- ok i got over this one now but its bit confusing for old windows users moving to vista

The breadcrumb/location bar is better

cornelius wrote:

*i have an folder called XYZ now when i go into the folder i want to give the file inside the same name as the folder so naturally enough i go to the address bar liek i did for years with xp and copy the name of the folder then i try to rename the file to the same FOLDERNAME + EXTENSION but it seems in vista for whatever reason the FOLDERNAME does not get stored on the clipboard? it seems to happen when theres an .iso file in the folder

I haven't tried with an .iso, but I can't repro the behaviour with other folders. I mean, I go into a folder, click on an empty area in the location bar, Ctrl-C, go to notepad, Ctrl-V, the full path is there.

Is there something I'm not understanding?

PaoloM wrote:

Note "Apply to all folders of this type"...

In Vista (and partially in XP) we have the concept of a folder type. So, when you change the view in a Document-type folder, music and picture folders will not change.

You can see the folder type by right clicking on a folder and go to the Customize tab. The first control will let you choose the template to be used for this folder.

I don't know if there is a way to change the folder type for all folders...

What I do is right-click on the drive, go to customize or something, and change the folder type and tell it to apply to all subfolders.  I do this for all drives, and I'm done.  Although, occasionally, Vista will revert some folders back to either picture view or mp3 view.

PaoloM wrote:



cornelius wrote:  oh theres another thing i noticed regarding the UI *the up button is missing <-- ok i got over this one now but its bit confusing for old windows users moving to vista

The breadcrumb/location bar is better

To an extent, but every time you want to "Go Up One" you have to move your mouse horizontally.

W3bbo wrote:

To an extent, but every time you want to "Go Up One" you have to move your mouse horizontally.

Or you can click directly on you destination rather than taking the scenic route.

PS: I think they should allow customization of the toolbar, including adding back this button for those who want it, but it looks like they've decided the toolbar will take the place of the "Tasks" in XPs Task Pane instead.

DCMonkey wrote:



W3bbo wrote: To an extent, but every time you want to "Go Up One" you have to move your mouse horizontally.

Or you can click directly on you destination rather than taking the scenic route.

PS: I think they should allow customization of the toolbar, including adding back this button for those who want it, but it looks like they've decided the toolbar will take the place of the "Tasks" in XPs Task Pane instead.

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse.

On the plus side, there's less duplication of tasks to be performed and the UI is less condescending. But it means you've now got advertising in the shell you can't hide: "Order prints", for example.

PaoloM wrote:


In Vista (and partially in XP) we have the concept of a folder type. So, when you change the view in a Document-type folder, music and picture folders will not change.

I've got to ask, because at first glance to me this seems incredibly lame (although I suspect there is a good argument for it) and I think I can guess what the answer will be but :-

What defines a music folder as different from a document folder? The presence of only music files? The presence of any music files? The presence of a file that is 'suspected' of being music (does it ignore m4p for instance)?

Rossj wrote:



PaoloM wrote:  In Vista (and partially in XP) we have the concept of a folder type. So, when you change the view in a Document-type folder, music and picture folders will not change.

I've got to ask, because at first glance to me this seems incredibly lame (although I suspect there is a good argument for it) and I think I can guess what the answer will be but :-

What defines a music folder as different from a document folder? The presence of only music files? The presence of any music files? The presence of a file that is 'suspected' of being music (does it ignore m4p for instance)?

Hah! I knew you were going to ask this! I SO knew it!

Er... actually, the type of a folder can be preset by the system (examples were My Music and My Pictures in XP), can be explicitely set by the user (by changing the template as I posted above) or it can be "inferred" by the OS.

I am not 100% certain of how this work, but last I checked, if more than 2/3rd of the first 100 items (or less, if there aren't 100) in a folder is of a certain type, the folder type gets changed.

And answering your first question, users typically want to have different view modes, different columns, etc depending on the type of items a folder contains. So, for example, changing all the Picture folder to "Really big thumbnail view mode" should not impact a Music album view, where you want items listed in details mode and sorted by Track #.

cornelius wrote:



"since old days of windows im used to all folders being in the "list" view"


.....
oh theres another thing i noticed regarding the UI

*the up button is missing

..this is not me either

PaoloM wrote:


Hah! I knew you were going to ask this! I SO knew it!

I aim to be please by being so predictable

PaoloM wrote:


Er... actually, the type of a folder can be preset by the system (examples were My Music and My Pictures in XP), can be explicitely set by the user (by changing the template as I posted above) or it can be "inferred" by the OS.

I am not 100% certain of how this work, but last I checked, if more than 2/3rd of the first 100 items (or less, if there aren't 100) in a folder is of a certain type, the folder type gets changed.

Presets I could live with, inferred types based on an unknown criteria - at least to me - is just going to confuse people, the moment I hit the threshold and copy one more image into a certain folder and all of a sudden it no longer looks the same. That doesn't meet the 'least surprise' principle (which I've just pulled out of thin air but probably does exist).

I am hoping it isn't what you suggest though, 67 items out of a list of 450 might change the folder type. That'd be horrible. Next you'll be telling me that assumptions are made about the sub-folders based on the contents of the current one (please don't, I was joking, don't make me cry).

PaoloM wrote:


And answering your first question, users typically want to have different view modes, different columns, etc depending on the type of items a folder contains. So, for example, changing all the Picture folder to "Really big thumbnail view mode" should not impact a Music album view, where you want items listed in details mode and sorted by Track #.

That is fair enough, and that should be *very* easy to change, but making assumptions and guesses as to what view should be shown make me wonder whether it is the right approach to take.

I can't help but wonder whether rather than coming up with 'intelligent' folder representations the explorer team might have fixed some of the bigger longer-standing issues with explorer?



Just my un-educated stab in the dark $0.02