Looking forward to Windows 8, what Microsoft missed in Windows 7, Part 1

Mike Halsey | May 10, 2009 | Comments

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Already talk about Windows 7 has moved forward to Windows 8, as Microsoft last month began hiring for posts within that division.  With this in mind I thought that, from a usability standpoint, I’d take a good in-depth look at Windows 7 and see what changes could have been implemented already and what we can perhaps look forward to in the future.

I want to start with Windows Explorer because this is essentially the same beast that we saw in Windows 98.  Okay, so Microsoft overhauled the main interface with Vista by introducing the breadcrumb bar, but if you open an explorer window today in a basic installation of Windows 7, you’ll be very used to what you’ve seen for over ten years.

Why is this a bad thing?  If we take a trip back to the good old-fashioned 20th century then we’ll see a time before the mass adoption of MP3 players, portable video players and digital cameras. The files we stored on our PCs were sparse and usually consisted only of office type documents and PDFs.

Now of course things are very different and we all have a plethora of diverse files on our PCs.  For some reason however, and even though you can change the settings, the default explorer view is of mixed file types all sorted alphabetically.  The option to change this to, for instance, my personal choice of grouped by file type, isn’t the easiest feature to find.

There are other omissions in the Windows 7 version of explorer too including the fact that we’re still seeing drive letters by default and compressed drives highlighted in blue when we really don’t need to any more.

Don’t get me wrong at this stage.  I love Windows 7 and want it to be the best product it can be.  It’s just a shame though that while Microsoft overhaul great chunks of the user interface they’re missing certain small usability issues that go along-side these.  I’ll write more about this in coming chapters.

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About the Author: The author of the new Windows 7 Power Users Guide, a how-to guide for non-technical Windows users on how to get the best out of Microsoft's new operating system, with step-by-step and quick guides. You can follow Mike on Twitter or on his own website The Long Climb

  • I Would Like To See A Tabbed Computer Window

    |_hdd_| |_Documents_| |_Downloads_| |_Control panel_|

    Imagining them as tabs since i love tabs and the option for the themes to be customized buy the comuunity non of this patched uxtheme,
  • smilingman
    A free program called QTTabBar adds such support to WinXP and Vista here>>
    http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/
    I have used it over a year now in WinXP and can not wait till its ported to Win7.
  • po134
    For me it's all about acessibility (I'm legally blind). Even though high-dpi improved it is still a constant seting for all your programs and cannot be set on a per-aplication basis (like the "compatibility mode" for example) and some older programs with absolute positionning really don't respond well with high-dpi so I find myself forced to disable it for a few program, then log out and log back in again ...

    I do think they should have pushed the library concept further and itnegrating search much deeper into the OS. There should be, by default, libraries for office documents, videos, etc ...
  • mike
    I agree.

    But to be honest, I don't really care for how file management is done in any current OS. The libraries are a good first step and I look forward to seeing what follows i W8.
  • Johnny Who?
    Might as well start talking about Windows 9 and 10, eh? Geez.
  • zeemeerman 2
    Then, why don't you try out Mac OS X? It's Finder (= Windows explorer for Mac) is much better in preformance than the Windows 7 one, althrough the design of Windows 7's one is better.
  • Link
    As a user of both Mac OS and Windows, I have to disagree. Finder maybe slightly faster, but it's far less user friendly and customizable. Information is displayed nicely on the details pane in Explorer, Aero Snap and Aero Peek make file transfer and use much easier, and the small windows apps like the new WMP 12 and Photo Viewer are almost as fast as quick look. (although I wouldn't mind a quick look feature)
  • nath
    looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts in this series... after you've written the series, publish a list of proposed changes (after liasing with your tech savy audience) and submit it to microsoft much like a petition. hopefully some serious changes can be made!

    your site is great, thanks
  • smilingman
    They need to make config. windows explore to one personal liking easier. As of now it takes so digging to get it just the way I like.
    A context menu and personalization panel like the one for appearance and sounds would be great.
    Integrations of features from programs like Xplorer2 also would be nice.
  • John D Sander
    With this talk of Windows 8 makes me think they have it made with 7 already. We all need to convey anything that we would like to see within Windows 7 before they let them go (the people working on it). I was looking forward to Windows 7 and some of the changes making it better than Vista, since I just had to upgrade early. Now I have second thoughts and what I see that I like, I already use and like on my iMac 24. That's where I should stay. My new Desktop is only good for gaming, since Apply has no games that aren't goofy...
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