One of the interesting things about the release of a major version upgrade like Windows Vista is that there are so many new features, that it might take you a while to discover all of the deep capabilities built into the product. Some features you will discover are nice changes that improve specific uses. Others can dramatically alter the way you use computers and make you much more productive. In Windows Vista, one of the best examples of this is finding and organizing things. It really starts with the Start Menu where, instead of hunting for the program you want to run, you can type in a few letters of the program's name and see it appear right on the top of the Start Menu. But search on the Start Menu is about much more than finding programs -- it can also be used to find a document that you are looking for as well. For example, if I am looking for a document about my friend "John", all I need to do is type in the word "John" and I can see all of the documents with the word "John" in the document, title, or tag placed on the document. If you do this, you will also notice that the search is not limited to the file system -- in fact, contacts from Microsoft Outlook that might help me get a hold of John are also displayed. I can also click on the "show all results" button that appears right on the Start Menu to see a list of all of the content (such as documents, web pages, emails, and even music) that relates to the word "John."
One of the things you will notice when you first sit down at a Windows Vista machine is that the Instant Search Box is available pervasively throughout the Windows Vista shell. Using the Instant Search Box, you can search any and all content on your Windows PC, including email, Office documents, music, photos, etc. But unlike other systems, we didn’t stop with "search". (Remember, indexing has been available in Windows for years and years -- it just works better now!)
Searching can only take you so far. Before we created Windows Vista, when I searched for things on Windows XP, I was often overwhelmed by the results of the searches I did. On Windows Vista, however, if there are too many things in the search results, you can instantly filter the results using the new built-in filter controls.
We also changed how you can view the information so you can spot things more easily. When you are looking in a folder using Windows Vista, you can easily change the view -- from a list, to details, to icons of various styles. In fact, the view can contain an image of the actual content (e.g., the first page of a spreadsheet) so we can finally start to get away from generic icon images where every Word document looks the same!
You may recall that when you used the "details" view in Windows XP, if you clicked on any of the fields (File Name, File Size, Date Modified), the shell would sort the folder based on the field that you chose -- then you could search the list yourself to find what you are looking for. Well as it turns out, sorting helps, but only goes so far (it's so Y2K), so for Windows Vista we created a new capability so that when you click to the right of any one of those headers, you can select specific values for the field to narrow the files that you want further. For example, suppose you have a folder full of Office documents and you want to find a business plan you wrote in 2002. You can’t remember if you wrote it as a Word document or as a PowerPoint deck, but you know it was written sometime that year. This takes seconds to find in Windows Vista by just selecting "2002" in the Date Modified header.
What is even cooler is that the logic behind the filter is shown in the address bar just like a path name so you can modify, add or delete the filters to refine your search and find what you need. Also, once you have filtered the files that you want, you can arrange the files in "stacks" based on any field that you are viewing. For example, if you go back to my 2002 business plan example, once I have created the filter that only shows me the Word and PowerPoint documents created in 2002, I can click on the "Type" field in Windows Explorer and select a stack view that creates four virtual folders -- one that includes the Word documents, one that contains the Excel files, one that includes the PowerPoint files and one for the Visio files. I can select any of these virtual folders and drag them to "Favorite Links" and the query will be available to me later.
While this is a cool capability for stacks, these virtual folders (called "Search Folders" in Windows Vista) work on any query/view that you create across any data you have. Some Search Folders are built-in, including "Recent documents," "Recent email" and "Recently changed." No matter what search query I create, I can always decide to save that query as a "saved search" right from the Windows Explorer using the "Save Search" button that appears in the "command bar" whenever the results of a query are shown. When a search is saved, it is always available in the "Searches" folder under Favorite Links. So, not only is my virtual folder (query) saved, but so is exactly how I configured the view of the folder. I use Search Folders for collecting together everything dealing with projects (e.g., a house remodel), regardless of where the information is stored (e.g., in email, in folder x or folder y).
The Windows Explorer allows you to view your Favorite Links, a folder hierarchy, or both on the left pane. Unlike in Windows XP, as I mentioned above, you have the ability to add to your Favorites by simply dragging and dropping folders that are most important over to your favorites. On the top of the Explorer view, you will also notice the new "address bar" that not only shows you the full path to the folder that you are viewing, but also allows you to modify the path at any level of the hierarchy. You should try selecting the caret and watch the system figure out everything that is available for you to choose from automatically. For me, this is a much easier way to navigate the file system hierarchy, especially when I am working with network shares.
Windows Vista also makes it possible to add a file details view or a file preview of any file that you select. Unlike previous operating systems, the preview in Windows Vista allows you to really view the file -- if it's a PowerPoint presentation, you can flip through the slides; if it's a video, you can watch the video right from the Explorer -- and unlike previous versions of Windows, if you want to look at both the Preview pane and the Details pane at the same time, you can do that too!
We have also modified the Common File Dialog (CFD) that can be used by Microsoft and third-party applications. Essentially, this is a mini-Explorer that can be used by applications. While in the default "mini-mode," you see a pretty simple dialog for tasks like "File Open" and "File Save,"” but there a few new things to notice. The first is that search is integrated into the CFD. So if I want to find and open a document about budgets from within an application, but I can’t remember where it is, all I need to do is type the word "budget" into the Search menu of the File Open dialog and I will see a list of documents (and have access to all of the filtering tools). Also, when I save a document for the first time or subsequently using the "Save As" dialog, I have the ability to add meta-data in the form of "tags" right from the Save dialog box.
While the new data management capabilities help me a lot at work, what's amazing is how much they have changed the way that my wife and I use Windows at home. We are very much into digital photography and in the past it was very hard to organize the thousands of photos we take in a given year. While we tend to store our photos in a new folder for each month, it was often hard to find specific photos by topic like "kids" or "Summer Vacation." Now with the enhancements to the Windows shell, you can add tags to the photos (like "kids" or "Summer Vacation") and add ratings as well. What I find particularly cool here is that when I stack my photos by tags, the same photo can appear in two stacks (e.g., a photo of my kids from our summer vacation would be both in the "kids" stack and the "summer vacation" stack), so I essentially have two virtual copies of the same photo. Of course, Windows Photo Gallery uses these same tags, and has even more flexibility!
Oh yeah ... one more thing. The Search Box supports a nice query filter syntax that you can read about if you go to the Windows Help system and search (of course) for "tips for finding files". Scroll to the bottom of the Help and try out the powerful query syntax on your system. There are Boolean operators, field variables, and even a way to type in natural language queries. For example, you could type in "kind:music artist:(Beethoven AND Mozart)" and get back all the music by Beethoven and Mozart on your system.
With Windows Vista, we are enabling the end-user experiences that we first previewed at the Professional Developers Conference in 2003. While we originally envisioned the need for a new storage system (WinFS) in order to deliver on our search goals, we were able to deliver on our vision by simply enhancing our existing storage system.
Like I said, Windows Vista goes beyond other systems in finding and organizing information -- making you much more productive once you step into the new world.
jim