Windows 8 will offer new tools for copying, moving, renaming, and deleting files, as Microsoft seeks to limit the frustrations so often associated with managing files on its desktop operating system.
“We want to make sure that using these core file management commands, which we collectively refer to as ‘copy jobs’, is a great experience,” Alex Simons, a director of program management on Microsoft’s Windows engineering team, said in a post to the company’s brand new Building Windows blog. According to the company, copy jobs account for 50 percent of all commands executed inside Windows Explorer, the operating system’s file manager.
Simons acknowledged that copy jobs can be cumbersome on Windows 7, the current version of Microsoft’s OS. The company’s “telemetry data” – information pulled from live Windows machines – indicates that a good 20 percent of all “large jobs” take more than two minutes to complete and that more than five percent of all jobs never complete. The current Window Explorer, he said, isn’t optimized for “high-volume” jobs or for running multiple jobs at the same time.
With Windows 8 – due next year – Microsoft will make what Simons calls “major improvements” to the way these jobs are handled. The biggest change involves file collisions, where a user attempts to put a file in a folder that already contains a file of the same name.
“People don’t know which files are which, and they find it challenging to find the information they need to make a decision,” Simons said of Windows 7. But with its successor, you’ll see a detailed description of each conflicting file, including thumbnail images where appropriate:
The new OS will also allow users to understand exactly what’s happening with the copy process, right down to bit-rates. If one job is sapping too many resources, the user can identify the culprit and, if need be, pause it.
But Simons said that the often unreliable and frustrating “Time Remaining” dialog would remain somewhat unreliable and frustrating. There are too many factors out of Microsoft’s control—antivirus software that automatically kicks into gear, intensive downloads, etc.—to give a consistently accurate estimate. So, his team has focused on providing more information on the process and more controls.
When multiple copy jobs are running, Microsoft will also consolidate them into a single interface. With his post, Simons offers both screenshots and a video showing off all of the company’s new file management tools.
