Windows Vista Review – Part Four

In this part of my Windows Vista Review I will be looking at the shell of WIndows Vista, this will also include the new system structure.

 

Windows Explorer

The new Windows Explorer has been massively improved with new features and a recharged interface, it is no longer just a place to search through folders to find a file.

Search

A new desktop search has been added to Windows Vista, which makes finding files much easier, you can access it through any Windows Explorer window and it can be found in the top right hand corner. If you don’t know what a desktop search is, it searches all your files content, so for example if you have a letter on your hard drive, you can type in ‘Dear Tom’ and it will find every file with ‘Dear Tom’ inside it. The desktop search shows results as you type so you can access your files quickly and easily.

If you search from an explorer window, it will only search the folders and subfolders from that location (eg, If you are in Documents, it will search just Documents). To access the full system desktop search, select Search from the Start Menu.

 

Location Bar

The location bar has changed in Windows Vista, making it even easier to navigate to your files. This new location bar takes each of folders you have navigated along your way and gives a list of all the subfolders next to it, so that at any point you can go back to a certain folder on the way. The picture above will explain this.

 

Sidebar

The sidebar now gives a list of locations so you can easily navigate to the main loactions on your system such as Documents and Recently Changed. You can access the classic Windows Explorer sidebar with a list of Folders by clicking the folders button at the bottom.

 

Properties Pane

By default this can be seen at the bottom of the window, it gives all the main details of the seleted file(s), or folder information if nothing is selected, it gets rid of the idea of having to right click and select Properties. There is a large version of the icon shown at  the far left and all details are shown in small lists. You can change the size of the Properies pane, the bigger it is, the more information that is shown.

A handy feature of the pane is that you can simply click on say, the title of the document and you can rename it, click Save and it is done, instead of the conventional way of right clicking, selecting Rename and then renaming the file.

 

Icon Views

In Windows XP we saw thumbnails and tiles added to the list of views, now Windows Vista, goes one step forward and offers the ability to show any size of the icon through a slider on the Views menu.

You can also simply click the type of icon view you want, and the Extra Large Icons are very big. What is impressive about the icons is that, they still look good even on the highest icon size.

 

Computer

Now ‘Computer’ rather than ‘My Computer’, you can access all your drives from this point, it can be launched from the Start Menu.

Your harddrives now have a handy progress bar which tells you how much space you have left on your drive without having to go into the properties pane, tasks are seen across the toolbar at the top and the sidebar gives links to the most popular folders. The properties pane at the bottom of the window gives you more indepth information about the drive.

It is easier to use, as is the whole of the new Windows Explorer Shell, with links to the main folders on the sidebar it makes navigating much easier.

 

Folder Structure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The structure of files have now changed in Windows Vista, no more is there ‘My’ before everything (eg, My Computer), now it is just the word (eg, Computer, Documents etc.).

In previous versions you found My Pictures, My Music and My Videos within your My Documents folder, now they are stored as seperate folders under your user folder.

 

Conclusion

The new shell is great, it is easier to use and enables you to find your files much quicker than before. The sidebar is much better than in Windows XP even if it doesn’t offer as much as it did (this is on the toolbar). The properties pane helps a lot and the option to change details from that makes it even better. Overall, a great improvement on the previous Windows Explorers

 

Next Review

In the next review I will be discussing the security in Windows Vista, as this is one of the ‘main’ improvements in the new OS. Come back soon to read Part Five.

 

Simon North, 8th February 2007