Name: Anonymous 2008-09-27 17:25
Hey codefags, I have a question. How extensible is Windows Explorer in Vista? I have seen addons to add tabs to it or add extra buttons, so I know it can be altered to some extent, but I don't know if it could be changed in ways necessary to overcome terminal case of alzheimers it has.
Vista constantly forgets the view settings for each folder. I set it to list, it comes up as tiles next time, or maybe big icons, or small icons, or whatever. Sometimes it decides to display a particular folder as a music folder, other times video or something else. I position things in the order I want them, it remembers for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but it always changes to some other display style or sort order on its own. No logic at all, completely random. This is apparently a common problem, and there is no fix as of yet. But could there be?
Would it be possible to write some sort of extension for explorer (or a totally separate program that just runs when you start Windows) that would record your settings for each folder and restore them the next time you open it, regardless of what windows itself wants to do? This seems like a trivial concept, but I have no idea how much control a user application could have over internal Explorer functions like sort order or icon size or display type, or the position and order of individual items in a folder.
If explorer exposes these functions so that third party software can modify them, then it seems that some sort of program could be written to keep track of the view configuration for each individual folder, and force Explorer to display it the way the user wishes.
So whaddya think?
Vista constantly forgets the view settings for each folder. I set it to list, it comes up as tiles next time, or maybe big icons, or small icons, or whatever. Sometimes it decides to display a particular folder as a music folder, other times video or something else. I position things in the order I want them, it remembers for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but it always changes to some other display style or sort order on its own. No logic at all, completely random. This is apparently a common problem, and there is no fix as of yet. But could there be?
Would it be possible to write some sort of extension for explorer (or a totally separate program that just runs when you start Windows) that would record your settings for each folder and restore them the next time you open it, regardless of what windows itself wants to do? This seems like a trivial concept, but I have no idea how much control a user application could have over internal Explorer functions like sort order or icon size or display type, or the position and order of individual items in a folder.
If explorer exposes these functions so that third party software can modify them, then it seems that some sort of program could be written to keep track of the view configuration for each individual folder, and force Explorer to display it the way the user wishes.
So whaddya think?