Respecting Explorer's Heritage

TechCrunch doesn't care much for the Windows8 Explorer, and says so. Diatribe aside, the writer does make one interesting point: having run pretty much in parallel when developing the user experience,  Apple and Microsoft are now diverging. Microsoft is sticking with the file-centric view, while Cupertino is going for a more task-centric future where 'files' are no longer relevant.

There are some valid points, but I don't mind the ribbon, and just hope it works better than the current Explorer, and doesn't crash and lock files all the time like it does now.

As the author wrote, Microsoft does seem to be "hedging their bet", by enhancing the old complex UI while introducing Metro as the new.  Is there any other way to do it?  If Microsoft abandoned the 'files' centric view, how do I and everyone transition with our existing files?  Microsoft sells to businesses and IT, so they always have to think, how can I ensure that a business will migrate to a brand new metaphor in the middle of a work week, risk downtime and even loss of data if they aren't vigilent, and buy our OS?  I think they have to enable a transitional system, if they really expect businesses to move to Windows 8, and give the ecosystem time.  If the new UI is better, then people will build on it, and will just naturally move away from the old.

I like what they've done.  Myself like many other power users will minimize the ribbon and use keyboard shortcuts like always.

But now I won't get messages from my mum asking how to put the pictures from the memory card on her computer.  It says, right up the top Move to Copy to.....  Brilliant.

2 hours ago,Ray7 wrote

TechCrunch doesn't care much for the Windows8 Explorer, and says so. Diatribe aside, the writer does make one interesting point: having run pretty much in parallel when developing the user experience,  Apple and Microsoft are now diverging. Microsoft is sticking with the file-centric view, while Cupertino is going for a more task-centric future where 'files' are no longer relevant.

To be clear, it's not that TechCrunch does't like Win8 Explorer -- they don't like anything from Microsoft.  In particular MG Siegler doesn't.  He's on par with John Gruber as an Apple fanboy (John Gruber though being the much better writer).

In my view MS is doing the right thing.  There are really fundamentally different things you do at work versus when you're mobile versus when you're on the couch.  Apple seems to want to shove everything into iOS.  In any case, I think this is all a win for the consumer.

3 hours ago,Ray7 wrote

TechCrunch doesn't care much for the Windows8 Explorer, and says so. Diatribe aside, the writer does make one interesting point: having run pretty much in parallel when developing the user experience,  Apple and Microsoft are now diverging. Microsoft is sticking with the file-centric view, while Cupertino is going for a more task-centric future where 'files' are no longer relevant.

Given that Windows Explorer is actually intended to be used with mouse and keyboard and that file management on a smartphone (to quote a character from one of my favorite 80s Outcast Boy Has Crush On Popular Girl, Tomboy Sidekick Loves Boy, Boy Finally Realizes That He Loves Tomboy Sidekick in The End* movies) is as handy as skiing and doing your taxes, I find some of the criticisms of Microsoft products "interesting":

Windows 8: It's too file-centric. It should be more task-oriented.

Windows Phone 7: It sucks because it gives you no way to manage files.

*Shame on you!

*Shame on you!

Actually, I'm still on the fence.

I took the Explorer b8 blog post as this:

"Hey, we want most people to use the Metro UI, but for those of you who don't, we're un-dummifying the rest of Windows."

Personally, I don't think I'd use the ribbon, but I did discover one feature that I missed: invert selection. It's even here in XP under the edit menu.

1 hour ago,spivonious wrote

Personally, I don't think I'd use the ribbon, but I did discover one feature that I missed: invert selection. It's even here in XP under the edit menu.

That's why they came up with ribbons for Office in the first place. Most of the requests they got were about features that already exists, but nobody could find them in menu jungle.