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Windows XP "Details View" pet peeves
Windows XP's "Details View" is so powerful that I bet there's a built-in fix for my pet peeves with it, or at least a simple GUI add-on (nothing bloated, please) or file manager that will help. I wouldn't bother with this gripe-post unless I hoped for a useful suggestion. I'm on this XP computer many hours a day and I'd love a solution.
What you see on the right is first a snap of the old Mac OS9's Finder "List View". I know OS X has something similar. Notice two SIMPLE things: first, the 'disclosure triangles', and second, the way 'sort by Name' actually puts files and folders adjacent to each other.
Next is a snap of XP's "Details View". In both cases I've snapped ONLY the leftmost area of the window. Now, XP does have its own equivalent of the Finder's disclosure triangles, click the 'plus box' to see more inside and the 'minus box' for none. OK, cool enough so far. And if the snap was wider, you'd see that by clicking ACROBAT7 a window panel to the right of this panel would show the files - NOT just folders - inside that folder. Nice, so what's wrong with that?Well, on the Mac OS, as you can see, I could keep the whole window very narrow and still see - and manipulate - individual files. In fact I could have say seven of these narrow folder windows arrayed across my screen. That may seem odd to Windows folks, but I used to do that a lot - well, maybe just four - when I was on a Mac. That becomes awkward in Windows XP because the files aren't disclosed in a narrow window.The other thing is, let's say there's a file named 'acclimate' in that downloads folder. Do we see it in this alphabetical name detail view in XP? No, because XP, unlike Mac, seems to insist on grouping folders together and files together (even that is inconsistent!). This comes into play for me all the time. Example, I save a web page out of Firefox as a 'Web Page - Complete'. The html file is down somewhere in the files but the supporting folder is up in the folders. This would not be so on Mac. Example two, I have a temporary text file, 'ACROBAT7 folder - move to partition E.txt'. I want that not to be hidden inside the acrobat folder, but at the same tree level, where I'll see it adjacent to the folder. Possible? Yah, if I make a New Folder to contain both...Some might say use a traditional two-pane file manager like Total Commander (great, I use it), but that's just it, I sometimes want more than two panes AND I want name view to list files adjacent to folders, which I can't seem to get TC to do. OK, I guess I can go looking, but please, if there's something built-in in XP I'm missing here, or if you know a file manager that solves these peeves, let me know in Comments.permanent link #
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