As was revealed a handful of weeks ago, Microsoft is currently working on a significant update to File Explorer on Windows 11 that will update several core areas of the app with modern designs and new features that will better integrate the experience with OneDrive and Microsoft 365.
[…]The home page itself is being updated with more integration with Microsoft 365. Along the top will be a feed of “recommended” files, which will be presented with larger thumbnails that will make it easier to see what files are being suggested to you.
That’s a lot of excuses for ads.
What would be nice? If it had tight integration with all the options for cloud / nas storage, instead of their attempt at once again locking people into OneDrive… but then again if they did that, it wouldn’t be the Microsoft way!
leech,
I wholly agree. It sucks that platforms and operating systems are being designed for proprietary services. Just because I’m a windows user it doesn’t mean I appreciate features that are locked into microsoft services. Microsoft isn’t the only one guilty of this either, google and apple are as well. If not for the federated protocols of the past having been standardized and expected to work, I don’t think there are any major companies that would be working on interoperability going forward. They want everything to be vendor locked by design. It’s obvious why companies do this…to promote their own services over rivals, but it’s rather unfortunate for consumers who don’t get the benefit from a higher degree of interoperability, flexibility, and choice.
This proprietary service integration happens across the technology spectrum: operating systems, IOT devices, games, applications, even cloud network switches, kitchen appliances, car heaters, etc. Whereas in the past all of these would be designed to be locally provisioned, now there are way more private data center dependencies. Often this is done with the goal of controlling owners. I don’t like it one bit, however I expect it to only increase in severity with time.
Yeah, Apple has iCloud, Google has Cloud and Drive, MS has OneDrive… all so they can charge for you to store your own crap on their servers…
Hell, Google is so desperate for you to use theirs, they give a chunk away for free with their Fiber offering… I would still rather keep my backups and personal files on my own NAS setup!
The same for ChromeOS (only links to GDrive).
This is where linux shines and Haiku OS will eventually be amazing. Haiku has had GoogleFS since 2005 (you can mount google at /google and perform search queries in the terminal).
JustinGoldberg,
The inability to access my network shares directly from android has been a pain point for me ever since I started using android. It would have been so convenient for mobiles and desktops to speak the same LAN protocols natively. All these years later they still haven’t fixed it. It was not an oversight though, both google and apple are doing it deliberately. Making it tedious to access LANs makes it easier to upsell their data center tethered services as the solution.
I don’t have that much of a problem with hosted services being offered, but I have a big problem when it’s done in a coercive way that removes options for users. It’s not right that they’re compelling users to use services in order to solve the problems they themselves created on purpose.
Since Windows 8 or 8.1, Microsoft has provided public APIs for integration of cloud storage services, and their OneDrive client since then has been based on these APIs. Any third party cloud storage service can be functionally identical to OneDrive,
There is also a standardized method to create third-party sidebars that integrate into Explorer.
There doesn’t appear to be any functionality on display here that isn’t available for third party cloud storge providers.
Drumellar,
There are plenty of cloud storage APIs, but they’re generally incompatible and hardcoded, which makes it difficult to switch if your applications support a different storage provider than the one you want.
https://nordicapis.com/what-you-should-know-about-cloud-storage-apis/
This can produce real pain points for users who want to use applications from one company but storage from another…
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-can-i-make-microsoft-365-auto-save-work-with/6f30d78c-fe34-45a3-ab18-127452808d09
Perhaps it’s simply too much to expect cloud providers to be compatible with each other in this day and age, but I think it’s a legitimate gripe. Also onedrive can interfere with traditional NAS drives, requiring hacks with rather significant operational cons get things working again:
https://www.epinionated.net/sync-nas-drive-onedrive/
Users who want to move data from onedrive back to a NAS may find themselves having to muck about the registry.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/onedrive-hijacked-my-windows-user-file-locations/d8a26bb3-4405-4188-991c-8856c89a4928
For better or worse, microsoft is not using onedrive as a traditional mountable file system, but rather using file system pointers that mask location, and therefor it may not be obvious to a user where their files actually are.
But TBF this isn’t FOR YOU, as like me you will probably just turn that crap off 15 seconds after install, what this is for is Joe and Jane Average that thinks backup is what happens to their toilet when they make an uh oh stinky
And as someone who has had to work on those computers let me tell you there is nothing more heartbreaking than having to tell some sweet little old lady that the pictures of her dead nephew are gone forever because the controller on her laptops SSD burned out and she had no backups. At least with OneDrive integration I haven’t had to give that “I’m so very sorry” speech since Windows 10 came out.
So for power users I don’t think this will change anything, they will just turn it off and use their own backup solution (in my case a combination of Google Drive, a USB HDD, and BD backup) as frankly the ability to fine tune OneDrive is really barebone and basic but for the 95% of clueless windows users? Its better than nothing.
I believe 3rd party cloud vendors have access to the APIs to integrate their services.
Why is Microsoft’s duty to do the integration work for them exactly?
“The existing header buttons, such as “new,” “copy,” and “paste,” will be moved into the file/folder view just below the header.”
I like that. When managing files, what you do using a file manager, you probably want to move, copy or delete files; the cut/copy/paste buttons make sense. XFCE Thunar and most other “file managers” in Linux desktop environments still lack that feature. OK, one could use midnight commander in a terminal… And sure you can configure KDE Dolphin to show those buttons, but it’s not the default. I won’t even mention the G-word. You are supposed to use key combinations, or you could try drag-and-drop with different results across desktop environments and across filesystems.
Also showing related files (even from the “cloud”) and related conversations (mail or whatever) is a nice idea. Too bad this comes from Microsoft, pushing OneDrive; also I don’t like Windows 11 yet. But at least the Redmond guys take their file manager seriously, keeping it useful for both office users and power users.
Hell, Nautilus (the Gnome file browser) doesn’t even have a sane method for selecting a single file when operating in “single click to open” mode. The only way seems to be ctrl-click and praying that no other file has been pre-selected already.
Sorry to come over with always the same argument but GNOME UIX is, for a semi power user, the worst thing I have ever seen in more than thirty years, it must be burn to ashes and launched as space garbage.
I’m careful with the G-word… mentioning this piece of insult might anger the gods.
sj87,
I also dislike single click=open interfaces inside of lists. This isn’t just a problem launching files either, it can also be a problem in the web browser especially if I’m trying to select text instead of click. On touchscreen browsers all too often I’m trying to scroll a page but it clicks a link instead…arg this is frustrating! This problem gets compounded on mobile screens with low information density, inaccurate finger pointing, and clickable images that can take up most of the screen. Sometimes it’s difficult not to accidentally click links.
Hopefully the “Recommended files” feature can be turned off. At least for me, I hardly ever open the same files from Explorer multiple times in my day-to-day, so this would essentially be a useless waste of space for me.
So the alternatives like xplorer2 will get a boost.
So basically to become one giant ad for OneDrive and Microsoft 365. As i am sure that after 10 years of stagnation. This is exactly what Windows users were hoping to happen. Demand driven.
First the start button and program icons being moved to the center, now the regular navigation items being moved to the side. I dislike this trend of redesigning the interface for touch screens, which most certainly has a lot to do with the Surface line.
I think it’s less about touch and more about transforming Windows into a living billboard you interact with. Also, if cheeseburger sales are down you can just stack the meat on the cheese instead of the cheese on the meat and like magic you’ve got a totally new cheeseburger to get people excited about. Windows 12 will surely have “new modern features” like the start button + program icons moved to the upper left and the system tray moved to the upper right. The future is going to be amazing!!!
I mean, if they’re trying to do the file manager “touch friendly” they are doing a horrible job, because it is still a horrible experience in tablet mode.
FWIW, you can still set back the start menu/tool bar icons to be left aligned.
I’ve almost completely left windows behind now.
But right up through windows 11 I have use one of multiple open source file managers that maintain the windows 3.x layout.
I know I’m in the minority, but it isn’t a small one.
Some of us just want to find the file and go.
Seriously! All these fancy icons and extra info?
Here’s a question for discussions, one about Finder as well.
Why is it a DOS file manager and a little 900k program for 16-bit windows, and a tiny bit of custom tweaking, is better at showing me info (eg codec, compression standard, page length) than the default fancy bells and whistles app?
I don’t want a visual preview of every file. Tell me import info and get out of the way.
You being used to an arcane system does not mean it is necessarily an objectively better approach for the majority of modern users.
Which file manager is that? Is is FAR?
“side pane experience”… What “experience”, what am I “experiencing” by looking/using side pane? What kind of bull***t talk is this? “modernized header UI”???
Back in the 90s, since I discovered graphical Norton Commander alternatives, explorer was something I used only if total commander or something similar wasn’t available (that is, couple of minutes until installation finished).
And since I haven’t used windows for the last decade (last couple of years I’m using it on a company computer, but only because they do not let me to install Linux, but at least I have TC), Double Commander is my daily driver, I would not change it for any mouse-based programs (explorer, thunar, whatever). There are buttons for file operations at the bottom of the window, but I do not remember if I ever used them. FN shortcuts FTW!
Linux users are becoming the Vegans of the Tech world…
javiercero1,
And macos users, and windows users, and iphone owners, and android owners, and telsa owners, and… Everybody’s got an opinion. Besides, what’s wrong with veganism?
I think he is referring to the religious and evangelical “converts” to the vegan religion. If a vegan just ate vegan food, noone would care, and people that has recently “found god” want to evangelize, wheter that purpose is to talk about, god, sports, an OS, a programming language, diet or any other thing that can evoke strong passions in the subject. Vegans are more like fundamentalist religious people as you can usually see them coming a long way due to how they dress, talk, look and carry themselves in everyday life in general as it has a subculture of it’s own in the west, whilst in india it is just the norm, and noone cares.
NaGERST,
He may be referring to evangelical stereotypes, but zzarko hardly fits the stereotype of evangelic zeal.
You managed to both overanalyze and completely miss a simple joke. Bravo!
The meme is about vegans talking about being vegan, regardless of how unrelated it (being vegan) is to the actual issue being discussed.
javiercero1,
I doubt you’ll appreciate the Irony here, but your post fits the meme even better than the OP’s post did. Even now that you’ve clarified it, I don’t really see the point of this discussion.
We tried to reason with you. When there was still reason involved. These days i must say that it’s rather painful thing to watch. That is “self proclaimed meat eaters” excited about start button moving from left to center. And then to be moved to the right. And after to be moved to the left again. Simultaneously shouting around Vegans are to get me. I am afraid that GNU/Linux can’t help here. We are way past that already.
Exactly that… I can move UI elements on Linux desktops around for I do not know how long, almost every desktop is configurable (OK, not every in the same amount, but whatever). So I am utterly amazed that so much bullshit talk (it is not just a side pane, it is an EEEEEXPERIENCE!) is spent on such trivial things… And I am not a vegan, but vegetarian, but who cares, I have never put that in anyone’s face, and I expect the same from others 🙂
I have never seen anything having a such vitriolic reception as this in the ars technica comments section. I stuggled to find anyone positive about the change, though i only read a few hundred comments.