Tabbed explorer design is amateurish mess

So I just installed build with new tabbed explorer and I do not know is it a bug or just poor design and quality assurance.

First and least problematic for now: the tabs are on the top of the window, just like in modern web browsers, but File explorer is not web browser – in file explorer you are meant to often tabs while also dragging files and folders and it is a bit unwieldy with tabs on top.

And it has (for now) menu bar that had to be dislocated and it looks weird and out of place.

They should have taken page out of many other file manager programs and put tabs in the main view or just above main view as it is case in MacOS and many Linux file managers.

The other issue is glaring white menu bar, across the middle of the file explorer in dark mode which is jarring at best. https://imgur.com/a/lDfCXNt

There is also a misaligned “up” arrow but at this point that is the least of all of their worries.

Conversation 7 comments

  • navarac

    18 June, 2022 - 2:59 pm

    <p>So with A/B Testing, you are even lucky to see this in the first place……</p>

  • rob_segal

    Premium Member
    18 June, 2022 - 5:52 pm

    <p>Considering how old File Explorer is, putting the tabs at the top may have been the most reliable option they had.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    18 June, 2022 - 8:03 pm

    <p>I mean the following seriously: open https://alternativeto.net/software/windows-explorer/ and check out the screen shots for all of the alternaitves. Do any appear to be closer to your ideal? If so, and if they have a portable version (many do), consider trying them out.</p><p><br></p><p>Putting this another way, MSFT’s, er, <em>dedicated focus</em> on its telemetry data pretty much guarantees whatever new design MSFT gives File Explorer it’ll be designed to minimize hatred from users, but experience suggests that widespread disappointment short of hatred is not an unlikely outcome. IOW, your corpse is likely to have turned into soil before MSFT comes up with a File Explorer design you’d find pleasing, so no clear benefit waiting for that to happen.</p>

    • adlton

      20 June, 2022 - 5:34 pm

      <p>So thing is I was mostly satisfied with Windows 10 File Explorer, I even liked Ribbon UI in it and I found it quite useful (Win 11 toolbar is not really big improvement imho).</p><p><br></p><p>I’m not really that much interested in tabbed UI but the current implementation is just awful and It is not something that can be turned off as far as I see.</p>

  • lindhartsen

    Premium Member
    18 June, 2022 - 9:08 pm

    <p>The misaligned "up" arrow is a known issue so that should get fixed soon enough.</p><p><br></p><p>The overall implementation feels early and incomplete. You can’t pull tabs out to a new window, or move them between windows, and the Explorer window is effectively a silo so if you hover over the icon in the taskbar or alt tab you can only switch to the window and not to the individual tabs inside of it. Given this is sort-of in the Beta channel maybe they’ll rapidly improve this and it’ll be relatively complete in the fall?</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    18 June, 2022 - 9:56 pm

    <p>| <em>The overall implementation feels early and incomplete.</em></p><p><br></p><p>So a perfect fit for Windows 11.</p>

    • navarac

      19 June, 2022 - 7:20 am

      <p>My thought, too. Like a lot of Microsoft’s offerings these days, unfortunately.</p>

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