Upcoming Windows 11 beta giveth and taketh away; further guts power user functionality

Mr. Bluntman

Mr. Bluntman

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...user-file-explorer-options-in-newest-preview/

To quote:

The new Insider Preview build of Windows 11 that was released this week introduces some handy and oft-requested new features, including the ability to write in any text field with Windows Ink and reintroducing the Windows 7-to-10-era "never combine labels" setting for app icons in the taskbar.


But Windows 11 giveth and Windows 11 taketh away. The new preview is also removing several power-user-oriented settings away from the File Explorer's Folder Options menu, most of which have been around for decades. These are the settings Microsoft has removed:


  • Hide Folder Merge conflict
  • Always show icons, never thumbnails
  • Display file icon on thumbnails
  • Display file type information on Folder tips
  • Hide protected OS files
  • Show drive letters
  • Show popup description for Folder and Desktop items
  • Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color
  • Use sharing wizard

While readding one feature and at the same time removing several others that have been in place since Bill Clinton held office, I just smack my head against a desk against some of the decisions that Microsoft has been making. And I for one do not like it. Like the TPM 2.0 requirement basically rendering all pre 8th gen Intel Core and 2nd gen AMD Ryzen PCs that are still very much viable to the scrapheap if you want to run their new OS. Arbitrary decisions and arbitrary requirements are just going to piss off and alienate DIYers like myself, and many, many others.

I already know a few people who say no to their shenanigans to the point to where with their next PCs they'll be migrating to Linux; never to run a Microsoft OS again. Me? I'm too tied to the Windows ecosystem and the pains of trying to use Linux back in the aughts has me good on that altogether. What's your thoughts on this fresh serving of cow pie?
 
I'd imagine there will be a way around this but yes I've been complaining about this kind of behaviour from MS for many years now.

It's a bit if a problem they have. If you cater to power users like us, we want as little nags as possible and to be able to access just about any setting. This does not work for your grandmother! She needs the exact opposite! And then toss in security and the fact that most of that security is dependent on the user.

If you look at apple, their OS is designed around being locked down right from the beginning. That caters to your grandmother but not you so much. Still, that is their market - the not so computer savvy.

Linux is the opposite. I'd place big bets on there not being many "average joe" Linux users.

So MS is sitting in the middle somewhere and I don't think they even know where they are anymore. They're still trying to target everyone as a customer and well that's not working out so great. And yet we have so much legacy with MS that it's very hard for some of us to just ditch windows.

I have thought for a long time now that they need something like an "expert mode". Make it so average joe asshat can't easily figure out how to enable it.
 
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THRESHIN said:
I have thought for a long time now that they need something like an "expert mode". Make it so average joe asshat can't easily figure out how to enable it.
Click to expand...
With online guides nowadays, even below-average Joe could figure it out within minutes. That is if he didn't download some random pre-baked version riddled with security holes from some random site.
 
GoldenTiger said:
With online guides nowadays, even below-average Joe could figure it out within minutes.
Click to expand...

Seriously?
Guess that means everyone I meet is a rock.

Every friggin release it gets harder and harder to find old interfaces that have the advanced features. And those are now getting stripped out one by one.

I can kill a linux terminal.. CMD.. ugh. like google a powershell command now.
🙄
 
Hide Folder Merge conflict
Not really sure what this is about

Always show icons, never thumbnails
This I am sure will irk a lot of people but personally usually when there are a lot of files where I do not need to see a thumbnail (videos etc) I sort the folder as a list. No thumbnails there and easier to search the file that I am looking for. With Large Icons sorting I do not mind thumbnails but hopefully the list sorting never gets axed.

Display file type information on Folder tips
Again, not entirely sure what this is referring to.

Hide protected OS files
Defaults to hide. This is good and bad. 99% of the people do not need to muck around OS files but for those power users who do, this sucks. But at least you can still turn it on via registry.

Show drive letters
Defaults to on, thank god. Windows is not a Linux and file system is completely different, drive letters are a good thing anyway and easier to remember than arbitrary names that get lost if you repartition the drive. Or heaven forbid the super long device names like KINGSTONSSD512SOMERANDOMLETTERS monstrosities. There is no need to disable this, ever.

Show popup description for Folder and Desktop items
Honesty, did this feature ever show anything useful information for anyone? Enabled or disabled, I do not give two shits.

Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color
Defaults to on, IIRC. I haven't used NTFS compression in decades. 🤔

Use sharing wizard
Never used this, no idea if this feature is still widely used or not.

So far as far as I can tell there is only one option, possibly two, which can be detrimental for power users but others seem to be useless legacy features that are ripe for axing anyway. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong though, I am just speaking from the way I use my PC.
 
GoldenTiger said:
With online guides nowadays, even below-average Joe could figure it out within minutes. That is if he didn't download some random pre-baked version riddled with security holes from some random site.
Click to expand...

When the OS churns too hard, you get the problem that guides are easy to find, but hard to follow because the buttons aren't there or don't work as it was in the guide.
 
including the ability to write in any text field with Windows Ink
I don't even know what is window ink, is it some acrobat reader clone? I never even heard about it, let alone use it.

and reintroducing the Windows 7-to-10-era "never combine labels" setting for app icons in the taskbar.
This was the main roadblock why I'm still running Windows 10 on my main PC. With attempts at auto installing 11 getting more aggressive, this at least gives me some reprieve that by the time I can no longer avoid the update 11 will be semi-usable.

Hide Folder Merge conflict
No idea what is this, never used it.

Always show icons, never thumbnails
For pictures and videos I prefer thumbnails anyway, I just hope they are not sending those home as "telemetry"

Display file icon on thumbnails
While I see the utility for some I prefer file extensions instead

Display file type information on Folder tips
Not sure what is this, maybe when you hover over a directory it shows what file types are in it?

Hide protected OS files
Rarely needed feature, but when it is needed it is very important

Show drive letters
It's already damn hard to just go to drive letters in explorer, showing a bunch of nonsense like "3D Objects" Who needs that at the very top when browsing for something?
Plus mapped network locations show up separately which is also annoying.

Show popup description for Folder and Desktop items
Never used this either

Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color
I think I have not used NTFS compression since XP.

Use sharing wizard
Never used the sharing wizard, because it never works, I always have to go to advanced sharing anyway, plus give permissions on the security tab to share something.
 
GoldenTiger said:
With online guides nowadays, even below-average Joe could figure it out within minutes. That is if he didn't download some random pre-baked version riddled with security holes from some random site.
Click to expand...
it's true and illustrates the problem of trying to cater to both the average idiot and the adept. it's not the easiest thing - but yeah MS is failing at this spectacularly.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm almost there myself. Just haven't pulled the trigger yet.
Click to expand...
The first few months will involve a ton of learning if you are new to linux. Once you find a distro you like tho, almost everything is the same as other distros. Commands, package installers and small things may differ but not my much. Makes it much easier to daily drive linux imo.
 
Dreamerbydesign said:
The first few months will involve a ton of learning if you are new to linux. Once you find a distro you like tho, almost everything is the same as other distros. Commands, package installers and small things may differ but not my much. Makes it much easier to daily drive linux imo.
Click to expand...

I have a little experience with it. Normally I install it on older computers to keep them running with Linux mint and XFCE.

I can get around for the most part but things like getting the sound over HDMI to work on an older IGP is more difficult.
 
The sad thing is that this isn't entirely new. Microsoft has basically spent the past couple of decades torn between catering to its enthusiast/professional base and chasing Apple. For every release that addresses what enthusiasts/pros want (such as XP, 7 or 10) there's a knee-jerk response to Apple that somehow manages to alienate Microsoft's core base without actually matching or beating what Apple does. See: Vista (aping the Mac's look and widgets), 8 (Ballmer's "oh no, iPad!" release) and now 11.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft should still pursue improved ease of use, but it's not going to get there by taking away features that do no real harm to the user experience. A more intuitive UI comes through major, carefully considered changes; those take more work than what you'd get through a biannual maintenance update.
 
One feature they implemented that I really like is that little pop in you get when you drag a window to the edge for window layouts. Really clean and well implemented. Very useful for multi-monitor setups especially with different orientations

I don't know when that shit was introduced but it's great

Pop os does a great job out of the box with it's window manager, but it's still buggy af
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yep, one random ms rep said it at a trade show to a journalist and now the mistake has spread as if it were true for years. Lol-worthy indeed :(.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected; however, to be fair, Microsoft never made any public statements to counter this guy and the resulting media storm at the time (I realize that the release of Win11 implicitly negated all that).
 
kirbyrj said:
I'm almost there myself. Just haven't pulled the trigger yet.
Click to expand...
I pulled the trigger a few months after Win 8 arrived. All my general computing needs are handled in Linux, gaming (ones that won't work under Linux) and the occasional photo editing session (I really dislike GImp!) are handled in my Win 11 VM.
 
Glad to see the Taskbar closer to being useful, I don't understand why MS removes any feature though?

Dramatic UI changes don't seem to improve things at all, the only new feature I like is the multiple-window layout grid.

I remember doing a registry edit to get the old right click back by default, and startall plus or something to do a windows 7 start menu style. If I wanted a new UI and wasn't just being forced to use 11 for stupid reasons I'd try another Linux distro or something. 10 was fine after some tweaking
 
Those are "internal" try balloon that we will maybe never get in non insider release (there a , apparently it is pure comestic UI change all those options are still in the registry and all folders can still be set visible via powershell (which now with the integrated GPT, doing all this via command line will be more and more the norm, if telling the AI I want to see NTFS protected folder or show full path including drive letter please would not be enough to start with).

Aurelius said:
Microsoft has basically spent the past couple of decades torn between catering to its enthusiast/professional base and chasing Apple.
Click to expand...
I think with how popular Linux must be with their last decade of developers hire (or using MacOS in a very similar way) they are chasing Linux quite a bit, from external but also internal force.

Terminal being open source and getting closer and closer.

It is a bit strange to talk about give and remove for poweruser and not mention the ReFS DevDrive, after winget, vcpkg, wsl getting better, easy Docker integration, now the yaml setup of a dev machine and all of this DevHome platform being again openSource, I imagine almost every coder at Microsoft below a certain age as a strong Linux experience and it create among them quite the friction when they have to work on windows and more and more they are making the experience more similar.
 
rhkcommander959 said:
Glad to see the Taskbar closer to being useful, I don't understand why MS removes any feature though?
Click to expand...
For some like the taskbar it is because it was started again from scratch code wise, to some of those above like show drive letter if it is so you always see them maybe it is no one ever want to not see their drive letter and if they selected it by mistake it created confusion ? Seem to be the case:


For now, the following advanced settings are no longer available:

  1. Always show icons, never thumbnails. (default off)
  2. Display file icon on thumbnail. (default on)
  3. Display file size information in folder tips. (default on)
  4. Hide folder merge conflicts. (default on)
  5. Hide protected operating system files (Recommended). (default on)
  6. Show drive letters. (default on)
  7. Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color. (default off)
  8. Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items. (default on)
  9. Use Sharing Wizard (Recommended). (default on)
 
LukeTbk said:
I think with how popular Linux must be with their last decade of developers hire (or using MacOS in a very similar way) they are chasing Linux quite a bit, from external but also internal force.

Terminal being open source and getting closer and closer.

It is a bit strange to talk about give and remove for poweruser and not mention the ReFS DevDrive, after winget, vcpkg, wsl getting better, easy Docker integration, now the yaml setup of a dev machine and all of this DevHome platform being again openSource, I imagine almost every coder at Microsoft below a certain age as a strong Linux experience and it create among them quite the friction when they have to work on windows and more and more they are making the experience more similar.
Click to expand...
Oh, Microsoft does try to court the Linux camp — one of the best things Nadella did was to focus more on services and less on trying to lock people into Windows. I'm just talking about broad strokes UI and those features catering to the largest number of people.

I think we can agree that Microsoft's existential crisis was much worse under Ballmer. He was so scared of the iPad threatening the Windows monopoly that he managed to wreck the desktop UI for a good three years while still failing to put a dent in Apple's tablet share.
 
rhkcommander959 said:
Glad to see the Taskbar closer to being useful, I don't understand why MS removes any feature though?
Click to expand...
Because they rewrote the taskbar entirely (supposedly) and, due to their entirely-opposite-of-agile development and management model, it's taken them this long to reimplement the feature.
 
I abandoned Windows for the vast majority of my use over two years ago. I still keep a Windows 10 install as a dual boot just in case for a game or something but that's it and it will often be months between times I boot to Windows.
 
Couldn't you have regular Wine for Windows apps even and Proton for gaming? Might take some work to make sure folders/files don't overlap I'd assume? (I'm just guessing here)
 
Aurelius said:
I think we can agree that Microsoft's existential crisis was much worse under Ballmer. He was so scared of the iPad threatening the Windows monopoly that he managed to wreck the desktop UI for a good three years while still failing to put a dent in Apple's tablet share.
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A big variable was being under government control for a while (they had very little agility to get into the IPod launch and mobile race for example, while where they were freer of scrutiny like console gaming they did better), the government took quite the control of Microsoft from 1998 to 2002
 
LukeTbk said:
Always show icons, never thumbnails. (default off)
Click to expand...
This one sucks to remove. Now if a new exploit is found in Windows parsing of image data (which has happened before), someone just sends you a picture, overflows the Windows image parser and now your PC has got malmare installed. When it was configured to just show icons, it never opened the file to generate a thumbnail and thus you couldn't get infected.
 
LukeTbk said:
they had very little agility to get into the IPod launch and mobile race for example
Click to expand...

Yeah, releasing the first Windows CE powered smart phones around 2002 was a lot later than Nokia's communicators in 1996. But that late start or government meddling isn't why they threw away their app catalog between windows mobile 6.5 and windows phone 7 (which is, incidentally, why Google refused to support wp7; they had invested in apps for wm6.5 and couldn't bring it forward, so why bother), and then went on to include a new semi-mandatory framework for apps again in wp8 and windows mobile 10 (helpfully called 'universal', because it didn't work on phones anyone in the universe actually had, well anyone other than one [H] person, anyway). That level of consistent fucking up takes management skill beyond most companies.

Edit: I think I named the wrong poster as a WM10 die-hard. Doesn't really matter who it is, so I'm not gonna try to remember.
 
Last edited:
Azrak said:
This one sucks to remove. Now if a new exploit is found in Windows parsing of image data (which has happened before), someone just sends you a picture, overflows the Windows image parser and now your PC has got malmare installed. When it was configured to just show icons, it never opened the file to generate a thumbnail and thus you couldn't get infected.
Click to expand...

Plus my download folder has so many gifs and memes, I'd rather not please lol
 
staknhalo said:
Plus my download folder has so many gifs and memes, I'd rather not please lol
Click to expand...
If it ever end up in the common windows we all get (if for some reason your explorer happen to stop to be in details view mode and the setting become relevant (which seem to always be possible for some reason):
  1. Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  2. Search for IconsOnly. If it does not exist, right-click on Advanced and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value. Name it IconsOnly.
  3. Set it to 0 to show thumbnails, or to 1 to hide thumbnails.
 
LukeTbk said:
If it ever end up in the common windows we all get (if for some reason your explorer happen to stop to be in details view mode and the setting become relevant (which seem to always be possible for some reason):
  1. Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  2. Search for IconsOnly. If it does not exist, right-click on Advanced and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value. Name it IconsOnly.
  3. Set it to 0 to show thumbnails, or to 1 to hide thumbnails.
Click to expand...

Yeah but they've been removing the ability to disable/turn off things legitly via group policy and even registry on even Win Pro for a while now - like Defender Antivirus and some update settings come to mind - so no point really they'll kill it however you're doing it eventually

giphy (7).gif
 
M76 said:
and reintroducing the Windows 7-to-10-era "never combine labels" setting for app icons in the taskbar.
This was the main roadblock why I'm still running Windows 10 on my main PC. With attempts at auto installing 11 getting more aggressive, this at least gives me some reprieve that by the time I can no longer avoid the update 11 will be semi-usable.
Click to expand...

Agreed. After over a year of casually using Win 11 on my laptop I still cannot get used to it. Some of the other changes look like a step back if I am reading them correctly.

But this seems to be a Microsoft theme at this point. Remove functionality. Add it back, but take away another feature. And by the time Win 11 is usable Win 12 will be out shortly, and who knows what common sense feature will be removed in that.
 
M76 said:
I don't even know what is window ink, is it some acrobat reader clone? I never even heard about it, let alone use it.
Click to expand...
Windows ink is the stylus layer for pressure sensitive tablets or displays.
 
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