Windows 8's Explorer Promises Better Performance

Apparently, Microsoft does plan on making sure that Windows 8 will deliver from all points of view. In this regard, the company took a better look at Windows Explorer and decided it needed some upgrades. 

For example, Windows 8 Beta will no longer suffer from the navigation pane scrolling bug that Windows 7 was affected by. 

Moreover, Windows 8 will come with a series of overlay changes that should result in better performance. Previously, Explorer suffered from lag due to icon overlays, and Microsoft took the opportunity to make improvements in this area. 

A padlock icon overlay was present in Windows 7 to indicate a private file. The checking for these overlays was slowing down the Explorer by about 120 milliseconds at launch.

Since overlays have limitations, as they can show a single state, and can also be confusing, Microsoft decided to remove the padlock overlay and have the info delivered in the “Sharing status” column.

Lead Program Manager on the Engineering System team, Ilana Smith explains that there are advantages the column brings:

Performance: The column is hidden by default, so the delay is incurred only when you opt into showing this information.

Tri-state: This column has three values: Shared, Not shared, and Private, so you get more detail than you would from the icon overlay.

Sorting/filtering: You can sort and filter the sharing status property, providing more powerful file management capabilities.

In Windows 8, EXIF orientation information for JPEG images will be respected. All will be based on camera information, and users won’t actually need to intervene. 

Windows 8 Beta will also offer the possibility to pin favorite folders to the start screen. Moreover, it will offer users the possibility to arrange the folders into groups and in various other orders. 

You will find the “Pin to Start” option in the dropdown menu from the “Easy access” control in the Home tab of the ribbon. 

“Additionally, just as in Windows 7, you can pin shortcuts to executables to Start directly from Windows Explorer, which can be very useful for applications that don’t add themselves to the Start screen by default,” Ilana Smith explains. 

Another addition to Windows 8’s Explorer is the possibility to open Windows PowerShell straight from the File menu. Users will be able to select the Open Windows PowerShell as administrator option as well.

“It is worth noting that there are sometimes conflicting points of view on whether advanced things should be in the GUI or in PowerShell, and how front and center they should be,” Ilana notes. 

“We are always balancing the complexity of too many options and too many ways to do things. As you can see, there is no right answer, so we'll continue to balance these complex choices.”

Through these menu items, users will be able to launch the PowerShell console right away. The Edit command on a PowerShell file will continue to include the PowerShell ISE.

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