File Explorer (Windows) - History - Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 - Search, Organizing & Metadata

Search, Organizing & Metadata

Windows Explorer includes significant changes from previous versions of Windows such as improved filtering, sorting, grouping and stacking. Combined with integrated desktop search, Windows Explorer allows users to find and organize their files in new ways, such as Stacks. The “Stacks” view groups files according to the criterion specified by the user. Stacks can be clicked to filter the files shown in Windows Explorer. There is also the ability to save searches as virtual folders or Search Folders. A Search Folder is simply an XML file, which stores the query in a form that can be used by the Windows search subsystem. When accessed, the search is executed, and the results are aggregated and presented as a virtual folder. When sorting items, the sort order no longer remains consistently Ascending or Descending. Each property has a preferred sort direction. For example, Sort by Date defaults to Descending order, as does Size. But Name and Type default to Ascending order.

Searching for files containing a given text string became problematic with Vista unless the files have been indexed. An alternative is to use the findstr command-line function. After right-clicking on a folder one can open a command-line prompt in that folder.

Windows Explorer also contains modifications in the visualization of files on a computer. A new addition to Windows Explorer in Vista and Server 2008 is the Details pane, which displays metadata and information relating to the currently selected file or folder. The Details pane will also display a thumbnail of the file or an icon of the filetype if the file does not contain visual information. Furthermore, different imagery is overlayed on thumbnails to give more information about the file, such as a picture frame around the thumbnail of an image file, or a filmstrip on a video file. Thumbnails can be zoomed on.

The Details pane also allows for the change of some textual metadata such as 'Author' and 'Title' in files that support them within Windows Explorer. A new type of metadata called tags allows users to add descriptive terms to documents for easier categorization and retrieval. Some files support open metadata, allowing users to define new types of metadata for their files. Out-of-the-box, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 supports Microsoft Office documents and most audio and video files. Support for other file types can however be added by writing specialized software to retrieve the metadata at the shell’s request. Metadata stored in a file’s alternate (secondary) stream only on NTFS volumes cannot be viewed and edited through the 'Summary' tab of the file’s properties anymore. Instead, all metadata is stored inside the file, so that it will always travel with the file and not be dependent on the file system.