I thought I’d write a little bit about Windows 7 today. I’ve been using it for about a month now primarily because my Samsung Netbook (which came with XP on it) won’t run Vista but it will run Windows 7. For me moving onto beta software is a rather unusual step – sure I’ll try it out and have a play, either in VMWare or on a spare test PC at work, but switching to something that’s not finished yet felt like rather a bold step – but I couldn’t stand XP a minute longer. If you are a Windows user who didn’t move onto Vista you might not understand this. Everyone said Vista Sucks when it first came out (myself included) but there were several things that I liked about it and eventually even its idiosyncrasies it grew on me.

One of the things that a sudden switch back to XP meant was the loss of the ‘breadcrumb trail’ - I don’t know if that’s what it’s called and tbh I can’t be bothered to go find out its official name right now, mark me down as a lazy blogger if you like, either way here’s a picture of the thing:

Initially when I started using Vista I thought that this thing was an attrocious idea. How would I be able to navigate my file system let alone my network if it looked like this?!
But little by little I got used to it. The ability to click on the name of the folder and see what was inside it was more useful than I’d originally given it credit for:

And for those times when I really do need the path to a folder (such as when I’m sending someone a link to a network file) all you have to do is click on the folder symbol at the left of the address bar and the path is displayed:

The same breadcrumb trail appears in the save dialog and it’s here I find it indespensible. No more navigating up and then down to adjacent folders, mostly it’s one click away.

(Before everyone writes in, yes I know those are Vista and not Windows 7 screenshots above. I couldn’t be bothered to go screenshot my Netbook right now either. Am I lazy today or what?!)

More soon!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Windows. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.