If you think about it, Windows’s file explorer view has not changed much in the last decade – sure, the File, Edit, View menu has been done away with in Windows 7, but the user is still overly reliant on the right click mouse command. But with all the focus on touch based interfaces, the right click command needs to start taking a backseat in future Windows releases. Microsoft is focussing a lot on making Windows 8 a lot more touch friendly, and it is not all about their Metro based interface.
Going forward, all Windows Explorer windows will carry a Ribbon bar with the most popular file handling commands placed in the tabs we have gotten used to in Microsoft Office. Microsoft quite obviously states that drop down menus do not work well in touch environments, yet there is still quite a few commands in the Ribbon bar that relies on drop-downs. What gives Microsoft? But if you are not going to use Windows 8 on a touch device (we first have to wait to see a Beta which shows off the touch aspects more), you can hide the Ribbon bar.
Microsoft also shows off a few new ways in which traditionally difficult tasks are made a lot easier on Windows 8.One example I really like is the Share Tab which makes it very easy to quickly create Zip archives to send away, but most significantly, has a much better interface to quickly share files on your Homegroup or Domain. Often used people you share to are shown as well:
The Search tools are also a bit smarter – users are not forced to use text searches, and can quickly do context based searches like “Documents created in the last week” using simple buttons, and recent searches can be easily found as well:
Now you might be thinking that the Ribbon bar does not give a lot of added features to power users who anyway use keyboard commands to get work done – and that might be true. But one feature I especially like is that you can of course add your own favourite commands to the title bar, including a new “run as admininstrator in command prompt” button. So then it is as easy as clicking a file (say some batch job), then clicking your newly created button. Then watch the actual process in the command prompt box. Great.
All in all these changes look very good, but some might argue that it needlessly complicates the interface, especially if you compare it with other operating systems out right now. My opinion is that old hands at Windows will be very comfortable with these changes, but my interest is still in the touch based Metro interface for slates / tablets. That is where the innovation lies right now, and that is where Microsoft needs to impress us…
Here is hoping we will see more of this at Tech Ed Africa. Bandwidth Blog will be there…
