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Many aspects of the way
Windows works can be controlled by changing settings scattered
throughout the interface. When it comes to the look and feel of Windows
Explorer, and the way it displays and handles your files, the Folder
Options window is a good place to start. In Explorer, open the Organize drop-down and select Folder and Search Options (or open Folder Options in Control Panel). We have windows like Folder Options filled with
holdover features that aren't really applicable anymore, such as these
found under the General tab:
Tasks
This misnamed option has nothing to do with the Tasks links shown in some Control Panel pages. Rather, choose Use Windows classic folders to turn on the menu bar that's hidden by default, and hide the Preview and Details panes. Of course, you can temporarily show the menu bar at any time by pressing the Alt key, and customize all of Explorer's panes by selecting Layout from the Organize drop-down.
Browse folders
It doesn't make any difference which option you select here, unless you hide the folder tree in Windows Explorer by opening the Organize drop-down and selecting Layout → Navigation Pane. Use the Ctrl key when double-clicking folder icons to override your choice here. Or, right-click any folder icon and select Open (not the bolded Explore) to open the folder in a new window. |
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Click items as follows
Set this to Single-click to open an item
if you like the idea of navigating most of Windows as though it were a
web site—in other words, without ever having to double-click to open an
item.
If
you choose the single-click interface, you'll no longer be able to
click an item twice slowly to rename it; instead, you must either
right-click and select Rename or carefully move the mouse pointer so that it is hovering over the icon and press the F2 key. |
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The
point of double-clicking is to prevent you from accidentally opening a
program or folder when you're just trying to select, delete, move, copy,
or rename the file. If you don't like double-clicking, but aren't
comfortable with the single-click interface Explorer provides, most
pointing devices (mice, styli, trackballs) with more than two buttons
allow you to program the additional buttons to handle double-click duty. The View tab (Figure 1) contains settings that affect how much information Explorer shows you, arranged in alphabetical order. 
Unfortunately, the defaults are set in favor of a "simpler" (read dumbed-down)
interface, which has the unfortunate and ironic side effect of making
many everyday tasks like organizing files, sharing folders over a
network, or even opening certain folders, more difficult. But probably
the most annoying thing is that Vista provides no help whatsoever for
these settings, so they're explained in detail here. Some
of these options may not be available in all editions of Windows. Also,
the use of some of these options can be very confusing, in that
enabling them ends up turning something off in the interface, or vice-versa. But that's the nature of the beast.... |
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Always show icons, never thumbnails.
This is a setting Windows
has been lacking for years. By default, Explorer automatically shows
large thumbnails when a folder (or search results window) contains
mostly image files. Turn on this option to disable thumbnails except
when you specifically select Thumbnails from the Views drop-down.
Always show menus.
This self-explanatory option basically accomplishes the same thing as selecting Use Classic Folders on the General tab. Of course, you can display the menu bar at any time by pressing the Alt key.
Display file icon on thumbnails.
Turn this off for
cleaner-looking thumbnails, or turn it on if you want to more easily
distinguish a JPG image from a Photoshop document. Better yet, turn off
the Hide extensions for known file types option, described later in this section.
Display file size information in folder tips.
Like many settings here,
this option doesn't do exactly what it says. Turn it on, and the tool
tip that appears when you hover your mouse over a folder icon will
include information about the contents of the folder, including names of
some of its subfolders and the size of the files contained therein.
Turn off the option, and all you'll get is the date and time of the
folder. To turn off folder tips altogether, use the Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items option, described later in this section.
Display simple folder view in Navigation pane.
The simple folder view
refers to the way the folder tree looks, and is turned on by default.
Turn it off to show dotted lines connecting folders, like the folder
trees in some earlier versions of Windows.
Display the full path in the title bar (Classic folders only).
This setting does not affect
the Windows Explorer title bar, nor does it have anything to do with
"Classic" folders. Instead, it determines whether the full path or only
the bare folder name appears in the taskbar button and in the task
switcher (Alt-Tab window) for each open folder window. Despite
this setting, Explorer's title bar never contains any text at all, and
the full path of the current folder is always shown in the Address box
at the top of the window. |
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Hidden files and folders.
Vista does not show hidden files by default in Explorer. If you set this option to Show hidden files and folders, any files with the hidden or system file attribute will be shown in Explorer, but their icons will still appear semi-transparent. To hide or unhide a file or folder, right-click it, select Properties, and change the Hidden option. For quicker access to a file's attributes, try the Change file attributes tool, part of Creative Element Power Tools (http://www.creativelement.com/powertools/). |
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Hide extensions for known file types.
Some believe this feature to
be one of Windows' biggest annoyances. Filename extensions—the last few
letters after the dot in a file's name—are hidden by default in
Windows, and have been in every Windows release since Windows 95.
Filename extensions (e.g., .txt, .jpg, .doc)
determine how Windows interacts with your documents, and hiding this
information only makes it harder to distinguish different files.
Hide protected operating system files.
When this option is turned on (the default), files with the system file attribute are hidden in Explorer, regardless of the Hidden files and folders option.
- Launch folder windows in a separate process.
By default, the desktop,
Start menu, and all open Explorer and single-folder windows are handled
by the same instance of Explorer. That is, only one copy of the Explorer.exe
application is ever in memory. If you turn on this option, each
Explorer window will use a new instance of the program. Although this
takes slightly more memory and may slightly increase the time it takes
to open new Explorer windows, it means that if one Explorer window
crashes. To
see this option in action, open a few Explorer windows. Then,
right-click an empty area of the taskbar, select Task Manager, choose
the Processes tab, and click the Image Name
column header to sort the list alphabetically. If you've elected to
launch folder windows in a separate process, you'll see multiple
instances of Explorer.exe listed, one
for each open window and one for the desktop. (Note that a problem that
prevented Windows from reinstating a crashed desktop in previous
versions of Windows has been more or less fixed in Vista.) |
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Remember each folder's view settings.
This option, when enabled,
forces Explorer to remember the "view" settings for the 20–30 most
recently opened folders, such as the sort order and icon size. This
"memory" overrides the default view settings, but only for the folders
you've recently customized. Unfortunately, this feature does cause problems from time to time. If you ever encounter a folder missing all its Details columns, for instance (only the Name
column appears), then turn off this option temporarily to force Windows
to forget the settings for the folder. Leave this option off if you
want your folders to always be shown with your chosen default view
settings. To change the defaults used by all folders, click the Apply to Folders button at the top of the Folder Options window. |
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Restore previous folder windows at logon.
Turn this option on if you
want Windows to remember which folders are open when you shut down or
log out, and then reopen them the next time you log in. Another way to
do this is to not shut down at all, but rather use Vista's Sleep
feature.
Show drive letters.
Turn this off to hide drive letters (e.g., C:, D:, N:) from Explorer's folder tree.
Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.
Among the additional services provided by the NTFS filesystem
are support for on-the-fly encryption and compression. Turn on this
option to visually distinguish encrypted and compressed files and
folders by displaying their names in blue.
Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items.
Commonly referred to as
"tool tips," pop-up descriptions show additional details about the file
or folder underneath the mouse pointer. Turn off this option to hide
these tool tips. See also the Display file size information in folder tips option, earlier in this section, for a related setting.
Show preview handlers in preview pane.
When the Preview pane is visible (open the Organize drop-down and select Layout → Preview Pane), Windows shows a thumbnail preview on the left unless this option is turned off.
Use check boxes to select items.
If you enable this option, you'll be able to select multiple files without having to drag a rubber band or use the keyboard.
Use Sharing Wizard.
Disable this option to use
the Advanced Sharing window instead of the feeble Sharing Wizard each
time you right-click a folder or drive and select Share.
Despite the fact that Microsoft apparently recommends that you use this
feature, only the Advanced Sharing window lets you specify sharing
permissions to properly protect your data.
What
it comes down to, of course, is that you should use what works best for
you. Don't blindly accept the defaults just because they came out of
the box that way. 1. Force Explorer to Remember Its Own SettingsOne
of the most common annoyances with Windows Explorer is, well, annoying,
because it should've been so simple for Microsoft to get it right. How many times have you selected the Details view in Explorer, only to find that it has reverted to the Large Icons view the next time you open the folder? For
the most part, Windows Explorer's apparent inability to remember its
own settings is the result of a battle among three opposing forces: your
saved settings, Vista's propensity to show thumbnail previews for media
files, and some poor coding on Microsoft's part. First, open the Folder Options window, turn on the View tab, turn on the Remember each folder's view settings option, and click OK.
Thereafter, Windows Explorer will temporarily save the settings for
roughly 30 of the most recently viewed folders. Most of the time, these
saved settings override your saved defaults. But how do you change the
defaults? Your choices are stored in the Registry
rather than in the folders themselves, which not only explains the
limit on the number of folders Explorer can remember, but exposes a
rather annoying flaw in the system. Say you choose the view settings for
a folder called Lenny. When you close and reopen Lenny right away, your settings will remain. However, if you rename the Lenny folder to, say, Karl, it will instantly revert to Explorer's defaults and forget the settings you made only seconds earlier. |
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If you're tired of constantly having to go back to Explorer's View
drop-down to change the icon size, or having to click the column
headers to sort file listings, you can set your own defaults. But
Explorer's use of your defaults won't make much sense until you figure
out Vista's clandestine template system. A template
is a collection of folder display settings that includes the view
(e.g., Large Icons, Details, etc.), the sorting method, and the columns
displayed. Each time you open a folder, Vista automatically picks one of
the five preset templates, and uses those settings to configure the
view. And herein lies the source of the problem: Vista is no good at
picking the default template. You might open a folder full of HTML web
page documents, and Explorer will choose the template for music files.
Or, a folder with nothing but photos will show up in the Details view, rather than thumbnails (Large Icons). Unfortunately,
there's nothing you can do to change how Vista chooses its templates,
nor can you remove or create your own templates. But you can
customize the view settings for each template so that when Windows
Explorer does get it right, you'll get the view you need. But
you may soon realize that Windows gets it wrong too often, and
customizing the templates just isn't enough. In this case, the solution
is to duplicate your favorite view settings across every template, so no
matter which template Windows picks, you'll get the view you need: Open
Windows Explorer and navigate to any folder with files in it. (This
won't work with drives, so make sure the folder isn't a root folder.) Right-click the folder in the tree, select Properties, and choose the Customize tab. Or right-click an empty area of the folder background and select Customize This Folder. (See the "Missing the Customize Tab?" sidebar, next, if these options aren't present.) If you don't see the Customize tab in the Properties window for a folder, all you need is a quick Registry hack to fix the problem. Open the Registry Editor and expand the branches to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers. Look for a subkey named {ef43ecfe-2ab9-4632-bf21-58909dd177f0}; if it isn't there, create a new key with that name by going to Edit → New → Key. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Double-click the NoCustomizeThisFolder value in the right pane, type 0 (zero) in the Value data field, and click OK. Do the same for the NoCustomizeWebView and ClassicShell values. (If any of these values are absent, skip 'em.) And finally, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer, and if the Explorer key is present, set the same three values to 0 (zero). Close the Registry Editor when you're done, restart Windows, and try again. |
From the Use this folder type as a template listbox, select the first entry, All Items, and then click OK. Set your view settings, column headers, and sorting to your taste. Open the Organize drop-down, select Folder and Search Options, and then choose the View tab. Click the Apply to Folders button, answer Yes, and then click OK. Repeat steps 3–6 for each of the other four templates: Documents, Pictures and Videos, Music Details, and Music Icons.
That's
it; now you have five identical templates, and you no longer need to
care whether or not Vista knows what kind of files are in each folder.
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