Classic Shell: Forum

With my wife, we've been using XP Pro SP3 for a long time (Classic). Her laptop came with Vista, but I soon used the OEM disks it came with to install XP.

Now we are changing to W7 with two new laptops - hers is Windows Home Premium 64-bit on a new Dell Vostro and mine is Windows Pro 64-bit on a Panasonic.

I've noticed a few extremely annoying feature changes between XP and W7.

With the XP 'Folders' view and a folder in highlight; as one uses the cursor down/up keys, the files and folders in that folder are displayed. Continued use of cursor keys changes the main display to show the contents of each highlighted folder.

This does not work on W7, requiring one to then press <Enter> after every cursor movement, to display that folders content. Will Classic Shell remove that limitation?

When one highlights a file or folder in XP, only the filename is in highlight. In W7 the whole of the line is in highlight. So making it difficult to find 'blank space' to drop files or folders into, especially if the destination folder is more than it's height, full of folders. This makes it too easy to drop files and folders into a sub folder and then finding which one after, is very time consuming. Will Classic Shell remove that limitation?

In XP Pro, copy and moving files from one folder to another takes an amount of time, but if a move (not copy) between folders on the same internal volume, then it's very fast, as I understand that only directory pointers are changed. The file itself does not get moved.


I've noticed that if a file is a picture (e.g. 1.5MB .PNG) then a progress bar changes the background colour of the 'Address bar' (advancing from left to right the background changes colour). This is very very slow. First on the source folder and then on the destination folder. It's as if a thumb image is being read, but as I always use the 'Details' folder layout, there is no thumb to display.

If I've converted those image files to a type that is not recognised by Windows (i.e. a map file in .ozfx3 format), then this progress bar does not delay the move. Will Classic Shell remove that limitation?

Classic Shell has an option to fix the first of the problems: Auto-navigate to the selected folder.
For the last problem try checking "Always show icons, never thumbnails" in the Folder Options of Explorer.

i dont understand the first problem.. i can always press the up/down key anytime..

qttab has an awesome preview function, that shows the contents & thumbnails of any folder you move the mouse over

for problem 2, win7 actually makes it easier to paste, you just right-click any folder or file in the directory you want to and it will paste to the current directory, you have to actually highlight the folder with a left click, then right-click carefully on the same highlight bar before pasting into that folder

@Landyman, here are some "recommended" tweaks:
1. Install Classic Explorer as part of Classic Shell. Open Classic Explorer settings from Start Menu. Enable All Settings at the bottom. Go to Navigation Pane tab. Change "Auto-navigate to the selected folder" option to "When using the keyboard". Set the Auto-navigation delay to: 700 (close to XP value). Re-open Explorer window. You should no longer have to press Enter to navigate to folders in the left pane. Arrow keys will work.

2. The behavior you describe about not having any empty space to drag to happens in Details view. For that, download Folder Options X from http://free-sk.t-com.hr/T800soft/softwa ... ptions.htm and check the option "Disable full row select". Now in Details view, only the Filename column will be highlighted, not the whole line.

3. As Ivo said, "Always show icons, never thumbnails" in the Folder Options of Windows Explorer will fix that problem.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

nice tool

Many thanks to all posters. I've now got to do some homework!



The left panel with highlight and up/down, will in XP display the contents of each folder in the right panel, when the highlight goes up/down. It does this automatically. But in W7, one has to press <Enter>, between every up/down to update the right panel.



I'm having a problem getting to understand your instructions. Are you referring to the right click 'Send To'? If so then this requires placing a shortcut in the 'SendTo' folder. Finding where Microsoft have hidden it in W7 took ages.

Thanks.

i understand you now.. but in my explorer window, no matter what folder I click in the left column, the right column is automatically focused, so i cant even use the up/down arrows to navigate through the folders, since every new folder selected focus goes immediately to the contents of that folder

how do you keep the navigation pane focused?

for problem two, i thought u meant finding a place to right-click & select "paste" from the drop-down menu... in that case, just right-click off of the folder name but anywhere on the row.. but i guess you mean its hard to find a place to drop files when you are dragging them to a window.. thats true, but theres a small space in front of the folders where you can drop them, pretty much just on the bar that separates the navigation pane from the folder contents, and a little label pops up to tell u where you are dropping it.. but thats a pretty small space..

so the tool GauravK posted makes the drag & drop behave the same as the right-click by limiting the windows selection area to the folder name row only, but any column off to the right isnt effected by your mouse location, so you can drag & drop folders into any column other than the first column.. but not useful if you first column is long, and your windows is so narrow it only shows the first column anyway

If you press tab key several times (it cycles through every bar, and whatnot in the active window), untill the first item in the navigation pane is selected, you can use it to move around the directories with arrow keys..

thats the 'change' hees refering to; because in XP, once you just click something on the navigation pane, you can move through it with arrow keys (rather than having to tab to it first)

I actually agree with him, in wanting this feature back now that i remember it (i used to use it back in the xp days, but after i switched to 7 i just forgot about it, but it was pretty handy)

i'd like whatever folder you click in the View pane, to be automatically expanded in the Navigation Pane

view pane? you mean file pane? (the main area all your files are)

right, that one.. it'd be easier to drag and drop from the file pane to the navigation pane too

Right-click in the empty space in the navigation pane and check "Expand to current folder"

cool.. thanks