Submission details
Explorer guessing the type of content in a folder
The explorer has several templates that set how and what to show about the files. These can be found and manually set in Folder Properties->Customize (which is arguably too clumsy and un-discoverable).
When you open a folder for the first time, the explorer apparently tries to guess what type of content it has, and use an appropiate template. Except that a lot of the time, it guesses wrong. ie: In my computer, "C:\" shows the columns "Track #", "Artist", "Album", "%PROGRAMFILES%" show "Date Taken", "Tags", "Rating", etc.
This is further exacerbated by explorer forgetting your settings for a folder, which makes it guess (and miss) again. I've set my preferred columns and view in these folders countless times.
In addition, the option to apply a template to all subfolders doesn't work, but this could be related to said bug.
Stop trying to guess. *All* folders should default to the "All items" template, using the detail view with some relevant columns. Or the tiles view, pick *one*. Only use other templates if the user chooses them, or for pre-configured folders (like [user]/pictures, /videos, /music, etc).
This is of course in addition to the fixing forgetful explorer bug...
High
Medium
Not fixed
Discussion (23 comments)
Apparently about 90% of my folders are filled with music... or so Vista would have me believe o_0
Yes, too many folders default to music. Quite annoying, and I really don't want to put all the work into changing it, only to see the settings forgotten.
I agree there are two problems, but your solution is a step backwards.
1) Explorer and remembering views still needs a pass over, as it doesn't keep 100% of the time as the user expects.
2) The 'determine' folder contents should be not dumber as you suggest, but a bit smarter. They have code that can do better than what Vista is doing to determine how to view a new folder, just get the guys to implement it. (Then if it is wrong, give the user a quick click to change the 'content type view' as easily as they can change the icon size/layout view.This should be an easy user accessible option that doesn't involve a properties dialog box.)
This is for me (as a maniac of the organization) one of the worst problems in Vista UI
I think that the feature is great but the quality of the automated guessing is bad. I really want to organize my photos by "date taken", my music by "artist" and so on without changing something in a dialog.
Yup, incredibly annoying. I've had folders that are created by extracting ZIP/RAR files, and contain only .exe/.txt.dll etc that are displayed as Music folders. Even the parent folder that contained the ZIP/RAR is displayed as all docs, so there is no excuse.
Default to All Docs for *EVERY* folder except the Music/Pictures/Video home folders. Also, REMEMBER for EVERY folder that I specify a custom display for. That may need to be a per-user setting as another user on my PC may want a different view.
TheNetAvenger, the solution may be a step backwards, but it's bulletproof as well. If the algorithm doesn't give sensible results every time, then it's more annoying than helpful.
If they fix it, and they fix it for good, then I'm fine with it. It could be a very useful feature. But I'd rather not have it than have it broken.
Well I think if there are really thousands of JPEG-graphics or MP3-Files in it, it is ok to let windows make it a picture/music folder. But if this is uncertain, Windows should pop up an information bar (as you know it from IE) and ask "This folder contains a lot of various file types. Would you like to make Windows organizing them easier?" And if you click on it it asks you which kind of folder type you want to have :-)
God I registered an account just to shout HOW ANNOYING THIS IS! All my folder in Program Files defaults to Music Details template. What the heck? And why can't I customize the template for important system folders like Windows an Program Files? This has got to be the worse UI bug in Vista.
This is by far the most ANNOYING thing in Vista. Your solution is EXCELLENT! Please, please, MS! Fix it!
This one is a really annoying thing. A folder on it's own for no rhyme or reason get's album or audio template. I would like to see only the default user folders to have templates and the user defines for any other folder, which remains as it is until changed by the user.
I agree this really really annoys me. Even when I manually change the columns it forgets.
This one drives me nuts. The solution given does not work BTW. I tried that several times (even before reading it here). It seems to work at first, but the nasty columns come back with a vengeance after a very short while.
I completely agree with this, the constant guessing and changing the display mode for the folder in Windows Vista drives me nuts. I keep having to change the view mode back to the one I want and it is a frustrating thing to have to do it so often.
Absolutely horrible (i'm using XP but I believe the behavior is the same in Vista, I used the betas). Currently, my Documents is labeled as a music folder, and for that one specifically, I can't change it! I've tried deleting registry entries too, but that doesn't work. Fix it Microsoft!
This is indeed horribly annoying. Frankly, some folders mix various content types, so i doubt that a single "template" will ever suffice and thus this feature needs complete rethinking. Perhaps if Vista had an intuitive column selection and this feature merely chose the most relevant ones it might be acceptable, but as-is, with its inaccurate detection, and furthermore bad templates (is there ANY folder type that I don't wish to see the date modified column for???), is worse that useless.
A registry hack for disabling it I found at:
http://graphicdna.blogspot.com/2008/04/disable-automatic-folder-type.html
I too just registered so I could comment on this. This bug is so incredibly offensive. Once again Microsoft has screwed up. I can't believe that in this day and age, we're still suffering from such ineptitude. Just fix this, NOW, in a SP.
Another thing is that if a folder is of a specified type Windows hides many "Sort by" columns. For example I often drag various mp3 files in my Music directory. Because it's Music, Windows makes a "Music folder" out of it. That is ok. BUT: If it is a "Music folder" you cannot sort by "Last Modified"... That pisses me off because I often want to see the recent dragged in files. But the stupid thing is, even if I reset the folder type to "Documents" (Default) in Explorer manually in every open/save dialog the folder is a Music folder again where I can only sort by Artist, Year etc...
I have trouble with Vista guessing and not remembering correctly the folder types.
How about opening all options in one Master view, and enable all columns with properties to be easily customized. I guess that having a dynamic Icon (preview content inside) at the start of the row, with the most important properties summary (dynamically rendered depending on the file type) next to the big icon, and THEN the expandable (+ icon) columns with all the possible properties (repeated too from the summary). So if I am looking different type of documents I would see relevant information always, and be able to see other columns important only to me (and sort on multiple keys).
The feature is extremely annoying. At a minimum there should be an option in the folder options to turn it off. I have had to resort to a rather complicated registry hack to disable this feature on my system. If the feature worked well it might be ok, but it can't properly handle the case where you have multiple different file types, or file types with no extensions, or many other different cases. What annoys me the most about it is when I have a folder configured with details view and I select the columns I want, and then I come back later and the effort I spent customizing the view is automatically wiped out.
I too registered just to express displeasure for this annoyance.
Ghostwater wrote on June 4, 2008, 9:31pm
I agree that folders should use a default template until the user chooses otherwise, but the user should also be able to choose what the default is.