This File Explorer concept is exactly what Win10 needs

By Dot Matrix
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Grand Master

BetaguyGZT

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"Out of place"? Whaaa? Apologies, but I disagree. To my eyes, they couldn't be more in place. That's a great design.

 

And I've been a student of UX Design (and had a couple projects of my own to push the boundaries of it) for over ten years now. I'm in a position to call something proper UX or not. :D The above is the bees knees. The cat's meow. The straw that stirs the drink. The sizzle of the steak. The ...

 

/me waits for the tomatoes and lettuce to start flying in my direction ...

 

:shifty:

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Dot Matrix

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Personally, I'd move the navigation buttons and address bar lower in the UI, and also out of the sidebar. The Ribbon titles would be better placed in the titlebar. But this design is still a great start, and something Windows badly needs if it wants to be a touch based OS.

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link6155

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Not exactly on topic, but if you want a nice file manager for Windows 10, check out Files&Folder.

 

It has some similar elements to that mockup and overall it looks great.

Grand Master

+virtorio MVC

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It needs something like this. I think this particular concept (being mostly a direct translation from Windows Explorer) isn't a great example and is far too complex to be touch friendly, especially on smaller devices.

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Dot Matrix

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24 minutes ago, link6155 said:

Not exactly on topic, but if you want a nice file manager for Windows 10, check out Files&Folder.

 

It has some similar elements to that mockup and overall it looks great.

This looks nice, but I'd rather have a native built in solution for the woefully inadequate File Explorer in Win10.

Experienced

WinMacLin Guy

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I am really liking this. Though I would move the navigation buttons outside of the Hamburger Menu. Beyond that I would not mind having a live folder option like on the OneDrive website where the contents of your folder are shown in a similar manner as live tiles (should be optional though since a lot of people seem to dislike live tiles). Oh and I know this cannot be shown in a picture, but a better plugin based preview system would also be great.

Grand Master

zhangm Supervisor

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2 hours ago, Boo Berry said:

It'd be nice if Microsoft would at least add some tabs, then I couldn't care less what File Explorer looks like.

QTTabBar adds tabs to the native Explorer window. It's free and appears well-maintained, with the freshest version only five days old.

Grand Master

trag3dy

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3 hours ago, Dot Matrix said:

Personally, I'd move the navigation buttons and address bar lower in the UI, and also out of the sidebar. The Ribbon titles would be better placed in the titlebar. But this design is still a great start, and something Windows badly needs if it wants to be a touch based OS.

What makes you think most people want a touch based OS? Especially for their desktop? Didn't we try that with windows 8 and subsequently realize it doesn't work?

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Dot Matrix

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5 hours ago, trag3dy said:

 

What makes you think most people want a touch based OS? Especially for their desktop? Didn't we try that with windows 8 and subsequently realize it doesn't work?

Windows 10 still works with a mouse, but in order to work on the Surface and other touch devices, the apps need to be built for it. Explorer isn't.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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hmmm, if they just made explorer dark it would look like that.

 

but I wouldn't mind a modern file expllorer but the filetree needs to expand when I'm browsing disks. and I would like it if the left side didn't insist on jumping down to onedrive every time I opened it when I'm going to click on one of my favorites on the top.,..

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trag3dy

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8 hours ago, Dot Matrix said:

Windows 10 still works with a mouse, but in order to work on the Surface and other touch devices, the apps need to be built for it. Explorer isn't.

Good. It doesn't need to be. They need something else entirely for mobile instead of shoehorning a touch interface into the desktop. 

 

Like I said, they already tried that and people didn't like it.

Grand Master

HawkMan

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2 hours ago, trag3dy said:

Good. It doesn't need to be. They need something else entirely for mobile instead of shoehorning a touch interface into the desktop. 

 

Like I said, they already tried that and people didn't like it.

you're kind of mixing up different things and adding in things that didn't happen to make your own conclusion there though. 

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Grand Master

trag3dy

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25 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

you're kind of mixing up different things and adding in things that didn't happen to make your own conclusion there though. 

Helpful. Why not say what I'm mixing up and adding in instead of just trying to make a snarky comment.


When I look at the screen shot provided above I see over sized UI elements and a full screen window. Those are things they tried in Windows 8 and we know how that turned out.

 

My point is that if you want a good explorer UI for touch then don't shoehorn it into the desktop UI. Make one specifically for that. Not one for both.

 

While I agree the current desktop explorer could be better making all the UI elements over sized and organizing them in an illogical way won't help anything. Also the current windows 10 explorer has all those features in the provided screen shot yet they are in places that actually make sense. Ribbon tabs on top, navigation elements and caret navigation below, etc etc etc.

 

I do like the darker theme though, I'll give them that.

Grand Master

chrisj1968

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20 hours ago, Dot Matrix said:

This File Explorer concept is exactly what Win10 needs...

 

untitled.thumb.png.09c9d90c1ba4367135a00

 

Source: @Win10_UI

this is EXACTLY what I had expected to some degree that never happened. if a UX theme could be made, if it hasn't already, I'd use it

Grand Master

HawkMan

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20 minutes ago, trag3dy said:

Helpful. Why not say what I'm mixing up and adding in instead of just trying to make a snarky comment.


When I look at the screen shot provided above I see over sized UI elements and a full screen window. Those are things they tried in Windows 8 and we know how that turned out.

 

My point is that if you want a good explorer UI for touch then don't shoehorn it into the desktop UI. Make one specifically for that. Not one for both.

 

While I agree the current desktop explorer could be better making all the UI elements over sized and organizing them in an illogical way won't help anything. Also the current windows 10 explorer has all those features in the provided screen shot yet they are in places that actually make sense. Ribbon tabs on top, navigation elements and caret navigation below, etc etc etc.

 

I do like the darker theme though, I'll give them that.

if you do a real comparison you'll find the elements aren't really any bigger than in regular file explorer and more organized and usable by mouse as well.

 

you'll also realize that UWP apps can in fact run windowed just as well as any other app.

 

As for what you're mixing up, first they didn't try it, they tried something else, and "people" didn't like it, a select few very vocal users and media decided they didn't like it without doing any real usability. 

No they don't need something different. some apps need to be differentiated between mobile and desktop/tablet, but that's the thing with UWP, you share a core you even share UI elements, but they're customized for different device types. you're just stuck on the old "It's a modern app and we hate modern because it's modern" train and can't get off. 

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

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4 hours ago, trag3dy said:

Good. It doesn't need to be. They need something else entirely for mobile instead of shoehorning a touch interface into the desktop. 

 

Like I said, they already tried that and people didn't like it.

There is nothing wrong with UWA and unified user experiences.

1 hour ago, trag3dy said:

Helpful. Why not say what I'm mixing up and adding in instead of just trying to make a snarky comment.


When I look at the screen shot provided above I see over sized UI elements and a full screen window. Those are things they tried in Windows 8 and we know how that turned out.

 

Since when was a full screen maximized window a bad thing? Users have been able to maximize windows since Windows 3.1, why is it bad all of a sudden?

 

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