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

daSmirnov

Good work guys.

I loved the idea of virtual folders like we had in the early Windows Vista builds, where the Documents folder was a saved search result, dissapointly that feature was removed as it was too confusing - although it does still exist, it was just unhooked from the Documents, Music folders etc.

This is an excellent replacement for it. I've always wanted to get public documents and pictures show up in the same view. I had to train the rest of the family to use the Public Documents links, and links to the Home Server on the Favourite Links section instead. This makes it much simpler to use, and they won't need to remember where specific things are stored anymore. They can just hit Documents on their Start menus and see the lot.

Also like not showing image names in the Pictures view too - I used to be religious about naming images, but now I just leave them with the default name from the camera and tag them instead. I suspect a lot of people do the same thing too.

BHpaddock

In reply to GRiNSER

#Oct 29th, 2008 @ 5:16 AM

The preview pane now has a button on the right side of the commands module to turn it on and off. It also has a hotkey, Alt+P.

pag3

In reply to DCMonkey

#Oct 28th, 2008 @ 3:36 PM

Yes, users (and developers!) can create new libraries in addition to being able to include more folders in the exising libraries like Documents, Music, and Pictures.

For example, suppose you store your visual studio projects in d:\projects. You can create a new "VS Projects" library and include the d:\projects folder in it. This new "VS Projects" library shows up alongside your Documents, Music, and Pictures libraries. From it, you can take advantage of library features shown in the video like the the new views for finding things "by type" or "by date modified" and the search box improvements for building queries.

Your files, of course, remain in d:\projects. The "VS Projects" library just provides you with a convenient way to find and organize those files. If you had a second folder where you keep additional visual studio projects (e.g. d:\moreprojects), you could include it in your "VS Projects" library, too.

scoobie

Hi,
This is a really great presentation, Windows 7 Search and Find features look really useful and I would upgrade my Windows just for this feature as its just what I've been missing.
One suggestion - Please can the Preview pane highlight the search terms too? So when you click on the Preview button the text in the document is highlighted in yellow. I've seen this in other search tools (specifically Enfish) and this feature is really useful.
I can see you are previewing and highlighting in yellow the text underneath the document name in the search - this is useful too so keep this.
thanks

kenlefeb

How well will Windows 7 work with existing metadata formats? I'm thinking specifically of the various forms of metadata for pictures. The support for image tags in Vista is extremely limited, though I really wish I could abandon Lightroom in favor of just natively managing my pictures and all their metadata directly within Explorer.

dwashin

In reply to kenlefeb

#Nov 2nd, 2008 @ 4:41 PM

Hey! It's David from the video.

Great question. What kind of support for image tags are you looking for?

All of the stuff that we showed in the video is built on top of the flexible and extensible shell property system. Even though a particular image format may not have support out of the box ISVs can plug in to give full support. For example, if you use a Canon EOS-1D camera you can get RAW support in Windows by installing the canon codec.

Thank for posting. Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.

Regards,
David

dwashin

In reply to scoobie

#Nov 1st, 2008 @ 8:56 AM

I'm glad you like what you see.

Thanks for the suggestion about the preview pane. I have forwaded it on to the feature owner.

stutony

In reply to giovanni

#Oct 29th, 2008 @ 5:39 AM

The problem with that feature, is that IT connects to the internet, and Downloads the information or metadata related to the file (e.g. Album name, year, artist, album art, etc) and 'applies it' to the media files. Problem is, IT DOES NOT APPLY THE INFORMATION to the file itself but to the 'WMP Library.' It is an issue I have dealt with as long as I used Windows Media Player, and for the changes to apply I have to at least apply them 4-6 times. And gosh forgive if the player decides to do a Library Update, all my applied changes get lost. That is what makes me wonder if Windows Media Player 12 will give us the option to let us do permanent changes to media files, then 'Lock' those changes in case we do OS re-install, or apply media to another library at another computer.

All I am saying is that I don't want my music to get wrong information and have to leave it as is. I don't like the album art that is too dark, too bright, or the color is bleeding.

dyapp

David,

I'm sorry to say that I tested W7 Beta extensively with the Windows Explorer and Libraries are very inconsistant, horribly broken and don't work well with WMP12. The default behavior keeps changing, doesn't always show the same thing every time you open the folder location editor, and the help is not consistant with designed behavior and Windows Explorer is worse than XP. I sent a lot of feedback yesterday through the system under Programs/File Management/Organize. This is not good, who the heck tests this stuff? Its not working but half the time. WMP12 doesn't even find Videos in the Video Library. You cannot even click into the My or Public folders in Documents, Pictures and Videos, but you can in Music??? Why is so strange.. the details come up differently under each Library too.. and people are confused because even the My and Public Folders are virtual names.. XP Windows Explorer just worked. Also I can no longer use the White Space to bring up the correct Right Context Menus.. it always wants to high light and select stuff I don't want to click on. Why is this so functionally broken?? Get your team in order!

Having a broken, inconsistant and crazy behavior is un-acceptable. I might have to stick with Vista or XP instead if you cannot get this right. Libraries are just a search targeted to specific folders and yet it doesn't even work.

Regards,
Dennis