Tabbed browsing in Explorer Shell


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I came across the following picture taken from Steven Sinofsky's Windows 8 on ARM demo. It seems Microsoft is making some changes to the Explorer shell. If anyone attended the presentation, could you provide details of what those controls are at the bottom of the Explorer window? The look like tabs to me, along with some additional window controls.

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I also notice that it has a unified Search/Address bar like IE 9.

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The bottom right kinda looks like it could be an implementation of virtual desktops... or aero snap buttons but that seems so unnecessary.

I was thinking the same thing, but why in Windows Explorer? Looks like window controls to me that will control on the fly views of Windows Explorer.

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True, remember, its still in development, so they might make the 'Show Preview Pane Menu' obsolete. I suspect they will work more like those in Windows Live Photo Gallery, see the attached screenshot.

Remember that Stephen Sinofsky is also president of Windows Live and Windows 7 was the first to include Scenic Ribbon apps, which Windows Live Essentials later incorporated. So, it seems like some of that design work is going back into the Windows User Experience.

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The bottom right kinda looks like it could be an implementation of virtual desktops... or aero snap buttons but that seems so unnecessary.

It looks like preview pane options to me

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True, remember, its still in development, so they might make the 'Show Preview Pane Menu' obsolete. I suspect they will work more like those in Windows Live Photo Gallery, see the attached screenshot.

Remember that Stephen Sinofsky is also president of Windows Live and Windows 7 was the first to include Scenic Ribbon apps, which Windows Live Essentials later incorporated. So, it seems like some of that design work is going back into the Windows User Experience.

Very good point. You may be right. I guess that would free up the top bar to more options. I wonder if they'll keep the details pane on the bottom then.

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Its also possible they might be moving Bread Crumb menus there and leave the address bar only for searching.

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Personally I think a more useful feature would be dual listers. I've never really thought "I wish I had tabs," but I have many, many, many times wished I could have two listers in the same window when doing file management.

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No search bar (probably integrated a la IE9) and no clock either.

The clock can be removed in Windows 7 as well so that's not unique to Windows 8. I also think that the command prompt shown in Jan's post will be removed before release and Powershell will take it's place.

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I think they should remove the address bar and just use the bread crum view but not in a bar like it is in Win7.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another UI difference is the centered text in titlebar (Not 100% sure).

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Centered text was actually from the Windows 1.01-3x days. Then when Win9x debuted, the text was moved to the left for some reason.

Then with Office '07 and '10, text returned to being centered again.

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Centred text in the titlebar has been seen earlier, but the tabs are new. It wouldn't surprise me if these were implemented, but also not in that location. The most logical place would be above the window or to the right of the address bar (Just like IE).

A lot of IE's design ends up in Windows, and vice versa. So I would expect something like this. But I do like the centred text.

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Things like tabs and dual panes have been in other file managers for years. The problem is that people have been putting up with Explorer for too long and are unwilling to pay for additional niceties. Has Microsoft finally woken up and will provide them out of the box?

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speaking of tabs, what's a good (obviously third party) program to incorporate tabs into Explorer windows for Windows 7?

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