Windows Vista/Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer (referred to as Windows File Explorer in Windows 8 and later) is the application used to access the files and folders on your hard drive and removable storage devices.

An Explorer window

Windows Explorer windows have been changed significantly in Windows Vista, as compared to Windows XP. The old menu bar is gone. The toolbar has been completely redesigned, as has the text box that holds the path to the current folder. The Back and Forward buttons are now next to the path bar and a search box has been added.

Explorer windows are also one of the first places that a new user will see the new Aero Glass feature. Explorer windows have no title or title-bar icon, and the glass effect extends down below the title bar to encompass the area around the navigation bar. The Back and Forward buttons are changed to highlight the glass effect. The whole thing is quite attractive.

As with prior (and future) versions of Windows Explorer, Back and Forward buttons are provided that work just like the same buttons do in a Web browser. Disabled buttons are clear and transparent; if clicking the button will do something, it turns a bright blue. The small down-pointing arrow next to the Forward button works like a Web browser's History pane; if you click it, you will see a menu appear containing the past locations you’ve opened in this window. This is also one of the first places that a new user will see the new drop-down menu design in Windows Vista (which has also been changed to be more attractive than in Windows XP) — but there is a bug here! Ordinary menu items are not quite as tall as the entries in the list, and the ragged-looking, thin checkmark does not appear anywhere else. Other check boxes are much more sharp and are bigger than this one as well. This bug lasted all the way through the lifetime of Windows 7 and beyond.

The Breadcrumb Bar

This complex widget replaces the text field containing the file path (that old C:\something\something else text that dates back to the DOS days). The rightmost name in the text field is always the name of the folder you’re currently looking at. To the left is the name of the folder containing this folder, and so on all the way up to the top (which is not always the root directory of your hard drive). If you click on any of these folder names, you will travel to that folder. If you click on the small triangle separating two folder names, a pop-up menu will appear containing the names of all the subfolders in the folder to the triangle’s left. (The bold one is the one that you’re currently in, or a parent folder thereof.)

If for some reason you want to see that long DOS path (to paste a new path into it, for example), you can click on the blank space to the right of the current folder’s name and a text box containing the full path will appear.

Navigation Pane

This is the pane to the left of the files themselves. By default, this displays only a small number of “favorite” links. You will find a link to your Documents folder, your Pictures folder, your Music folder, a folder called Recently Changed that is actually a saved search (clicking it will make a list of the most recent documents you saved appear, going back in the order that you saved them, like the Documents submenu of the Windows 98 Start Menu). It also contains a folder called Searches and a link to your computer’s Public folder.

At the bottom of this pane you will find something that says “Folders” with a little up-arrow. This is similar to the Folders pane in Windows XP. If you click it, a hierarchical list of all the folders on your computer will appear, with the Desktop at the top. (If you’re looking for the C: drive, that can be found underneath the Computer entry.) The current folder will always appear highlighted in this list. Enabling this pane enables it for all Explorer windows at the same time.

The toolbar

Unlike the toolbar in the Windows XP version of Windows Explorer, the contents of this toolbar change to reflect the current folder you’re in as well as the file or folder you have selected. You will always find two menus on the left: Organize and Views. The Organize submenu contains a number of commands that apply to Windows Explorer in general, including commands to toggle the display of the various panes. It also contains a command right at the top called New Folder — which is extremely convenient, as under Windows XP, you always needed to use the New submenu, which contains a number of other items, all of which are never really used, and there is always a delay while Windows loads the submenu’s contents. (The New menu is still here, if for some reason you want it; you can find it if you right-click in the pane containing the currently displayed files.)

The Views menu is actually a split button. If you click on the icon or the word Views, the window will circle through the different ways it can display the icons in the current folder. If you click on the down-arrow itself, however, a pop-up menu will appear containing the names of all the views. You will find a slider here, which does not appear anywhere else in Windows Vista. This slider allows you to set an icon view size somewhere between the the presets. You can click the names of the views to the right of the slider to set them directly.

The other commands in the toolbar vary, but there is one item that needs to be pointed out. If you have a file selected, you will probably see a command called Open with a program’s icon next to it. Clicking this button will open the document currently selected in its default application (a Word document into Word, for example). However, if you click the down-arrow to the right of the word Open, a drop-down menu will appear listing all of the other programs on your computer that can also open this file. If you click one of them, the selected file will be opened in that application. Not all applications may support this feature.

Explorer window contents

There are several different ways you can view the contents of a folder; these are called the Explorer views. There are several sizes of icon view: Extra Large, which is 256 by 256 pixels; Large, which is 128 by 128 pixels; Medium, which is 64 by 64 pixels and new in Windows Vista; and Small, which is 16 by 16 pixels and, for some reason, was not present in Windows XP. The List view scrolls to the left and right and contains your files stacked up in columns; the Tiles view displays a 64 by 64 pixel icon, as well as one or two lines of extra information to the right of the icon, below its name. Details view, usually the default, uses a grid where there is one file or folder per row, and the columns are used to display different information about each icon, such as size or last-modified date.

Sorting, filtering, and stacks

In the Details view, the header is used to contain the column names and allow for resizing of the columns. However, in Windows Vista, this header appears in every view. If you click on one of the columns’ names, the icons or list will be sorted according to that attribute, in ascending order (A–Z, smallest first, and so on). If you click the name again, the icons will be sorted according to that attribute in descending order (Z–A, largest first, and so on). A tiny arrow will appear at the top-center of the column that is currently being sorted by.

When you move your mouse over one of these column names, a black arrow will appear to the right of the name. If you click on this, you will open a pop-up containing commands that permit grouping and filtering of the items in this folder according to that attribute. (A Sort button with much larger arrow is also provided here, if you can’t see the usual one.)