Windows 7: Find and Organize Part 1 - The User Experience

Posted By: Dan Fernandez | Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:02 PM | 85,217 Views | 31 Comments
David Washington and Paul Gusmorino demonstrate the key enhancements in Windows 7 to finding and organizing your files. David and Paul show off the ways that the team has simplified the Windows Explorer, the new libraries feature, which is a virtual collection of your music, photos, and video, wherever they may be, including on multiple machines. You'll also see how to use the Library pane to easily find and filter your data.

You'll also see the new advanced search filter that provides a visual way to filter your files based on the files metadata.

- Watch Part 2
- Watch their PDC session
Rating:
6
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#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:26 PM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
I'm kind of hesitant about this. I love the idea of extending Libraries from Media Player to all sorts of stuff, and being able to access it from explorer, but... If the way WMP11 handles metadata is any indication, this is going to be an utter disaster. Album art not being up to date, the metadata you search on being persisted or not seemingly randomly... My album art wall in Media Center is full of holes simply because Media Player refuses to store the album art I told it the album should have.

Like I said.. I love the idea, but if this hinges on the same malfunctioning metadata reading and writing that WMP uses.. I'm foreseeing disaster.
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:36 PM
DCMonkey
DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!
Can you create your own libraries in addition to adding locations to the existing ones?
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:40 PM
DCMonkey
DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!
I was under the impression that WMP's library is being tossed in favor of using what is basically Windows Desktop Search with libraries being a way to organize specific sets of search locations instead of having to search for media files across all search locations.
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:47 PM
littleguru
littleguru
<3 Seattle
Dan you forgot one! Where is PaoloM??? I know that he works with David...
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:57 PM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
Where will it get the metadata? From the files themselves? Or from WMP's internal metadata database that never gets written to the files themselves even if you explicitly tell it to?
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 4:02 PM
BHpaddock
BHpaddock

All the library operations, like showing the "album" view, operate over the Windows Search indexer.  It gets the metadata information from the file, using the registered property handler for that file type.  The out-of-the-box handlers should cover all the common media cases just as in Vista.

#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 4:11 PM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
In other words, I should now completely abandon editing metadata through media player, because the Library feature and Windows Search will all use the metadata in the actual file, that Windows Media Player refuses to write to the file, rendering my file unfindable.
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 4:14 PM
BHpaddock
BHpaddock
I don't know how WMP editing affects the files in Win7, but I can try to find out.  I've never had a problem with it, though.  I'm sure David, Paul, and others will be checking out this thread and taking note of your feedback, so keep it coming!

Hopefully part 2 will be up soon, featuring yours truly =D
#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 4:19 PM
Bas
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

If the WMP library works the same as in XP/Vista, it'll be as follows:

  1. Edit album artist
  2. WMP writes album artist to its own library
  3. WMP periodically writes data in library to the actual file's metadata

It's step 3 that always fails for me. Which would mean that the file's metadata wouldn't ever get up to date, which would mean that the Libraries wouldn't be able to pivot on that data. The only way of fixing it that I see is  getting Windows Media Player fixed, but I'm sort of giving up on that, since nobody else seems to have this problem.

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