Praise!

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sun
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:02 am
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Praise!

Post by sun »

Lacking a twitter profile, a contact form on this site, a "General" forum category, or any other means, I'm going to abuse this forum to say, or actually shout out a big

THANK YOU!
You saved my life.

Seriously. I've spent (or rather wasted) the past weeks with restoring sanity in Windows 7, trying all kind of tricks and tweaks being available on the net, but wasn't remotely able to get Windows Explorer to reliably behave, look, and feel like it did in Windows XP. I have absolutely no idea what Microsoft was smoking when they changed the entire UI to be unusable and removed any kind of configuration options or even registry tweaks... I've tried Classic Shell and a couple of other tools, and although some of them worked, they introduced regressions on their own.

Luckily, searching for Windows Explorer replacements yielded Explorer++, and although I've only tested it for a couple of minutes, it is exactly what I was searching for. A clean, simple, XP-style file manager, perfect for productivity.

So I'm not sure whether you're aware of this unique selling point, especially as it's not clearly mentioned on the project home page, but I can assure you, many users upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 are searching for exactly this: Explorer++, sanity.

By highlighting this fact, I'll take the chance to amend: In case you're planning additional features, a more smooth user interface, or perhaps even aligning Explorer++ more with Windows Explorer in Windows 7 — just in case you're planning anything in this direction - please make it optional. :)

In case you're interested in my initial user experience of using Explorer++, I'd be happy to do a write-up on that. Just let me know.

Thank you!
Daniel F. Kudwien
ajs
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:37 pm

Re: Praise!

Post by ajs »

sun wrote:Lacking a twitter profile, a contact form on this site, a "General" forum category, or any other means, I'm going to abuse this forum to say, or actually shout out a big

THANK YOU!
You saved my life.

Seriously. I've spent (or rather wasted) the past weeks with restoring sanity in Windows 7, trying all kind of tricks and tweaks being available on the net, but wasn't remotely able to get Windows Explorer to reliably behave, look, and feel like it did in Windows XP. I have absolutely no idea what Microsoft was smoking when they changed the entire UI to be unusable and removed any kind of configuration options or even registry tweaks... I've tried Classic Shell and a couple of other tools, and although some of them worked, they introduced regressions on their own.

Luckily, searching for Windows Explorer replacements yielded Explorer++, and although I've only tested it for a couple of minutes, it is exactly what I was searching for. A clean, simple, XP-style file manager, perfect for productivity.

So I'm not sure whether you're aware of this unique selling point, especially as it's not clearly mentioned on the project home page, but I can assure you, many users upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 are searching for exactly this: Explorer++, sanity.

By highlighting this fact, I'll take the chance to amend: In case you're planning additional features, a more smooth user interface, or perhaps even aligning Explorer++ more with Windows Explorer in Windows 7 — just in case you're planning anything in this direction - please make it optional. :)

In case you're interested in my initial user experience of using Explorer++, I'd be happy to do a write-up on that. Just let me know.

Thank you!
Daniel F. Kudwien
Hi Dan,
welcome to the site. Your description matches exactly what my feelings were when I had to switch from XP to Win 7 last year. I managed to get Win 7 to resemble XP as much as possible, even though there are still a few things I miss from XP. But without E++ it would have been hard to work with Win 7. definitely.
sun
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:02 am
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Re: Praise!

Post by sun »

Exactly - I'm still preparing a (very long) blog post about restoring a full, "classic" XP style in Windows 7 covering all details, but I suppose that will still take a while...

Upon reading my OP again, I clearly forgot to mention that my research for available Windows Explorer replacements took a couple of hours, spread over multiple days (not a fan of carelessly installing arbitrary software and don't have a virtual Win7 machine at hand yet)... and I actually found Explorer++ in the very beginning already, but since the screenshot(s) kinda look like there's more "fancy" stuff under the hood (that no one needs), I've merely put it into my stack of replacements to check out.

Thus, if there would have been a clear promotional statement on the project page: "If you love Windows XP, then you'll love Explorer++." (obviously, this slogan doesn't work for Windows XP users :twisted: ) then I probably would have paused my research for a moment to give it a try (and entirely skipped the research in the end).

Compared to all the other available tools, Explorer++ seems to be the only one that tries to simply remain clean & mean, restoring a Windows XP-style interface, although still adding some but well though-out convenience features like tabs, default window position, portable settings, bookmarks, or cumulative folder sizes under the hood.

I'm not a Windows programmer, but so far, the Explorer++ project is really appealing to me (and of course, it's also actually allowing me to get things done). Thus, I'm actively considering to contribute something back - whereas I'm primarily thinking of the project website and collaboration space, as I'm a Web/PHP/Drupal expert. At least it looks like the Explorer++ project could use some support on that front?
ajs
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:37 pm

Re: Praise!

Post by ajs »

I am quite sure any help is welcome!
I would suggest you sent a PM to David (Derceg) which is the owner of the project itself and talk about that more in detail.

btw, when using E++ try out keyboard and mouse combination: E++ has a lot of "hidden" features that I didn't find out until I started working on the code itself ;)
sun
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:02 am
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Re: Praise!

Post by sun »

I'd love to hear from David about his fundamental "State of Explorer++" (self-)perception and vision, as well as future and long-term considerations, plans, and ideas for the project, before attempting to kick-start anything in the stated direction.

Meanwhile I encountered some crashes, bugs, and badly missing functionalities (compared to plain ol' Explorer), but I don't really know how development is organized, how to provide quality issue reports, and how to contribute/collaborate in general. In the end, that's exactly the area (project/collaboration) in which I'd be able to help out and do something, by building a solid system for explorerplusplus.com and/or by moving individual components intelligently into the "cloud". Large-scale web deployments, project management, issue tracking, and design/marketing/usability is my home. So, lots of possibilities here, and obviously some things to be discussed... ;)

Thoughts?
ajs
Posts: 409
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:37 pm

Re: Praise!

Post by ajs »

sun wrote:Large-scale web deployments, project management, issue tracking, and design/marketing/usability is my home. So, lots of possibilities here, and obviously some things to be discussed... ;)
Recently I was talking to David about an issue tracking system, so it looks like you came at the right time. AFAIK, David is kind of busy till middle of April, but being the project owner he is the one making the decisions.
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