Microsoft Is Making File Explorer More Powerful With Version Control and 7z Compression (theverge.com) 44
Sean Hollister reports via The Verge: At Build, Microsoft now says it's adding native version control to File Explorer by integrating systems like Git, letting you see new changes and comments directly from the app. Here's a cropped and zoomed version of the provided screenshot so you can get a better look. [...] Microsoft says it's also letting File Explorer natively compress files to 7-zip and TAR; currently, the right-click context menu has a "Compress to ZIP file" option, but ZIP is thought to be a bit antiquated in terms of how much compression you get.
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Too late, I converted to Total Commander Years ago (Score:3)
Re: Too late, I converted to Total Commander Years (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Too late, I converted to Total Commander Years (Score:4, Interesting)
ive been using double commander. https://doublecmd.sourceforge.... [sourceforge.io]
directory opus looked nice until the pricetag https://www.gpsoft.com.au/#dow... [gpsoft.com.au]
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I'm sticking with DOpus now, but I'm not happy with their new subscription model for updates. I will keep an eye on it and see how it pans out, because they have not announced pricing yet and everyone currently has two years of "free" updates, but if it's bad enough I may have to move.
Double Command looks interesting but doesn't seem to support DOpus' multi window system, which is how I always use it. I may just stick with the last free update of DOpus, since it rarely seems to have any security issues. Get
Re:Too late, I converted to Total Commander Years (Score:4, Interesting)
on the checklist of things to do in any windows install is fixing explorer's asinine defaults, switch everything to details and unhide everything, set up proper directory structure and links for my stuff (all windows default "places" are just bins where some programs store crap by default i wont ever bother with anyway). then it's quite usable for moderate use. if i find myself needing to move around or otherwise process lots of files then i probably should have better things to do anyway.
i don't really see the point of managing revisions through file explorer, though. tortoise did that and it works in a pinch but is just clunky. a command line is really all you need, or an ide if you want it fancy. anyway, whatever "native version control ... by integrating git" is supposed to mean ... yaaay! what's not to like?
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That's a great checklist if you don't own your system and aren't an administrator on it. For those systems where you are I can only wholeheartedly recommend replacing the explorer entirely.
Not one to normally slashvertise a product here, but I've been using Directory Opus for 2 decades now and really every time I touch a default Windows install (like my work PC) I feel like I'm going back in time rubbing sticks together to try and make fire.
That said revision management may be the one thing dopus doesn't ha
Who asked for this? (Score:3)
Who's idea was it to put AI into a simple file search, to put spell check into notepad, and to put version management into the file browser?
We need to find them and kill them. They need to be stopped.
=Smidge=
Re:Who asked for this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who asked for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because program managers get promotions by making new features, not by keeping old stuff working."
Then why isn't notepad notepad++ by this point and why is mspaint still a thing? Why are the sysinternals functions not incorporated yet? Where is winscp/putty integration? For instance, when an operation fails because something is in use... why not indicate WHAT IS USING IT?
These all seem like very basic, obvious, and intuitive improvements. These are tiny utilities that Microsoft could either have bought out or are already open source that virtually every power user/developer installs. Let's not forget partitionmagic/disk cloning functionality and benchmarking. Added together they are bloat like emacs is bloat vs vi... pretty much every feature MS does integrate sucks out 100x more performance than all this standard stuff combined.
As for adding 7z... that seems a rather obvious improvement that they should have incorporated a couple decades ago along with RAR support, tar and bz2. Competing platforms essentially have all this out of the box.
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This is all a Catch-22. See, I'm kind of an old fart, and I prefer the Operating System to not do anything but give me an interface to my hardware and let me decide how I want to define everything by using Programs. You spend your money on Programs and they in turn keep the Program functional. Independently of whoever may have made the Operating System. Proprietary obsessed Operating Systems try to incorporate other folks Programs' functionality to make things 'more convenient' or have 'free features' which
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"I'm kind of an old fart, and I prefer the Operating System to not do anything but give me an interface to my hardware"
Yes and there is an operating system for that, it's called *nix. But the windows model is supposed to go the other direction, instead of small purpose built tools/blocks combined for highly flexible custom behavior it takes full advantage of seamless macro integration.
"which in turns kills off the folks who invented or perfected the task"
Maybe but being bought out by Microsoft isn't so much
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"I'm kind of an old fart, and I prefer the Operating System to not do anything but give me an interface to my hardware"
Yes and there is an operating system for that, it's called *nix. But the windows model is supposed to go the other direction, instead of small purpose built tools/blocks combined for highly flexible custom behavior it takes full advantage of seamless macro integration.
While I know what you're going for, that's not really accurate. Linux, itself, is just a kernel. GNU/Linux, the system, DOES include utilities that do (nearly) all of the things listed, and they (mostly) follow the Unix philosophy of small, purpose built tools that work well together. For example, my distro includes multiple console based text editors, and multiple GUI text editors, and all of them are more feature rich than MS Notepad. I have also have sed, awk, perl, php, python, ruby, etc etc etc.. all i
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"Because program managers get promotions by making new features, not by keeping old stuff working."
Then why isn't notepad notepad++ by this point
It's not Notepad++, but Notepad in Windows 11 is a much heavier and more complicated beast than notepad in Windows 10, which is almost perfect. (Lack of triple click or multi level undo support aside.) Careful what you ask for, we're getting it, and it sucks. I use notepad on Windows 10 at work every day and I dread the day that my machine gets selected to "upgrade" to 11 as much for that reason as any.
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"It's not Notepad++, but Notepad in Windows 11 is a much heavier and more complicated beast than notepad in Windows 10, which is almost perfect."
Notepad++ is perfect or nearly so, it is fast, light weight, and has every feature you'd want in a text editor without giving up any of the simplicity of notepad. It completely and totally obsoletes notepad except for the singular 'already there' feature. Yes it has more buttons but you don't have to use any of them, you can use it just like notepad if you want. I
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I use kwrite or [g]vim, even on Windows I'd use vim if I had the option, except I don't have the option of loading anything at work. Except I was able to install the Apple Devices app* from the Mickeysoft store, so maybe I should see if vim is on there and it will let me install that too.
* It doesn't actually work
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FWIW, there are portable versions of vim. Worth a shot.
https://portableapps.com/apps/... [portableapps.com]
https://github.com/vim/vim-win... [github.com] - grab the zip, unzip, run the exe
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So perverted incentives? That figures. There must be a reason MS stuff always is crap.
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"Because program managers get promotions by making new features, not by keeping old stuff working."
Well, that explains the rampant feature bloat in Outlook.
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Spell checking is a Windows API so it is trivial to add support for it. It won't add much bloat to the code, the actual spell checking stuff is all in Windows.
Version management in the file browser is also popular, e.g. TortoiseCVS and TortoiseGIT. Some people just like managing versions that way.
AI in file search is the really stupid one. PowerToys Run is a decent implementation, with control over what is included. Windows Search has always been terrible and AI will only make it worse.
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One of those is not like the others. Version management is actually useful: the 'restore previous versions' function has saved my bacon on several occasions.
encryption? (Score:2)
Ok, great Previous Files on steroids. Will it finally after all these years handle encryption and password protection? Or will file Explorer still silently fail when you try to open an encrypted archive?
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Previous Versions.
They will screw it up. (Score:2)
Don't worry, Micro$oft will screw up the implementation so that it is more trouble to use than it is worth. Also it will give the wrong answer sometimes, and you will never be able to find out why.
Also, Bill Gates should burn in Hell.
Late, very late, Microsoft (Score:2)
Microsoft continuously is 20 years behind or more and then usually gets it wrong. Why is anybody using their stuff?
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When I hear about Microsoft integrating something, like Zip or now 7z, I think about the Amiga and how we had pluggable this and that ages and ages ago. Or DOS file managers where you could add new archiver formats by just putting in the command line switches for each new program. Microsoft made a lot of that same stuff possible through the registry, but what a PITA by comparison.
Also, if Microsoft's support for 7z encryption is as poor as their support for Zip, you will want to use 7zFM anyway...
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Indeed. Well, MS needs to distract people from two major security disasters in the last 12 months, so they are offering "features" now. On the level of a semi-competent hobbyist coder, no less.
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Ah, yes. I tend to forget the truth is not wanted in many quarters. My apologies.
Performance? (Score:2)
The "compress to zip" feature is abyssmally slow. So is the unzip. The 7zip context menu makes all of that obsolete and useless.
Zip is antiquated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's been around a while, but it's literally *everywhere.*
That Word document you just opened, is a zip file with a bunch of XML files inside. Go ahead, use 7-zip to open one, take a look around.
Same for Excel and PPT files.
Docker images are basically just...zip files containing what you want in your virtual "drive."
Android APK files are zip files.
Zip may be old, but it's optimized for speed and compression well enough to serve a whole lot of purposes. It's not going away any time soon.
Re:Zip is antiquated? (Score:4, Informative)
Another zip file with a different extension is .epub
Inside are mostly just HTML files and an associated CSS file.
Don't like the default font in an .epub? Open it and change the CSS file.
Don't like the H1 heading size for the chapter names? Found a mistake in the TOC? Found a misspelling or missing quotation mark? Fix them.
Want to add a different cover art? Well, you get the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Zabkat Xplorer2 for me (Score:1)
I can't believe it (Score:3)
So trying to play (Score:2)
File Explorer has and always will be an inferior file manager.
I've been using Directory Opus since my Amiga days and it's still the most superior file manager ever written.
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So trying to play catch up with Directory Opus and other better file managers.
File Explorer has and always will be an inferior file manager.
I've been using Directory Opus since my Amiga days and it's still the most superior file manager ever written.
Pathminder Plus from 1989 or GTFO!
The 7z is nice (Score:2)
The actual 7z interface will likely still be better though.
GIT in the explorer is actually cool (Score:2)
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TortoiseGit ftw
File Explorer is such a turd (Score:2)
I just want it to perform better :( If you have a network resource, expect explorer to go cross-eyed with its tongue hanging out while it figures out if the network responds or not.
Want to look at files on a slow drive like a sd card or your phone? Go get coffee while it prefetches metadata.
Sort files by date? Settle down there cowboy! Your 24-core CPU will need a while to finish this task.
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Agreed. Is File Explorer ever going to take less than 3 hours to find a file by name on a 1TB filesystem?
zip (Score:1)
Given the price of storage and speed of networks, zip is good enough 110% of the time. You wanna use 7zip, fine, I can deal with it, but don't shove it down people's throats who never heard of it before.