Over at Microsoft’s Building Windows 8 blog, the Windows 8 team have detailed in a lengthy post how they will be improving copy, paste, rename and delete tasks in the updated version of Windows. The team is relying on anonymous user data to help improve these tasks in Windows 8.
Microsoft have three main goals for improving these actions in Windows 8:
- One place to manage all copy jobs: Create one unified experience for managing and monitoring ongoing copy operations.
- Clear and concise: Remove distractions and give people the key information they need.
- User in control: Put people in control of their copy operations.
The team have consolidated the copy/paste jobs in Windows Explorer into a single dialog with some new options. Users will easily be able to stop individual copies, as well as pause and resume them at will to speed up certain operations and have greater control. You will also be able to open source and target folders from the window.
They have also improved the detailed view by adding real-time throughput graphs for each copy, showing more information about the speeds of copies. Microsoft recognized that the time estimation is far from accurate due to the huge amount of variables, and while they are still including it in the detailed view, they are placing a greater focus on other, more reliable information.
Finally on the list of improvements that they have detailed, they have shown the new dialog that appears when there is a conflicting file name. The new interface places much more control in the user’s hands while still improving the clarity of what is occurring. Via easy to use checkboxes, users will be able to select which specific files they wish to replace, keep both copies of the files or replace all files, hopefully with minimum confusion.
As the Windows 8 team puts it, these improvements add up to “building a significantly improved copy experience, one that is unified, concise, and clear, and which puts you in control of your experience."
Images courtesy of Building Windows 8
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