15 Feb
2004
15 Feb
'04
9:01 a.m.
Ok, after my slight anger on IRC, i've decided to write a constructive
email and post it here. Please note this is my opinion, though others
may agree with me.
First of all, Martin, let me say i have the utmost respect for you and
your work.
However, it has come to my attention that the explorer clone is starting
to become a mess. It has too many 'features' built in. The compaints i
have are:
1) Too many 'ways' to browse a users computer. You have all those
buttons at the toolbar, why not just make those features into shell
extensions or at the very LEAST compiletime options. Explorer needs
only 1 way to browse directories/files. (Which should be whichever way
that closely resembles microsoft's windows, and by all means winefile
and explorer should be seperate applications.) Among the features that
need to go are: The web support, Registry browser, NT Object File
System or whatever the hell it's called, The 'shell browser' or whatever
it is, The little bar above the Status bar should go. The Interface
shouldn't be MDI, as microsoft's is not.
2) The toolbar has nothing useful. The windows explorer toolbar has
back, forward, and up buttons for example, to browse the users
computer. Our explorer has none of these.
3) The web support needs to go. I don't know what all was done, but
web support causes alot of potential vulnerabilities. Just look at
microsoft's windows, and even IF it didn't, loading IE/mozilla every
time explorer starts is a WASTE.
Normally i'd stand back, work on my own explorer clone, but this IS
ReactOS, our goal is to clone windows, we need to keep our UI as
consistent as possible with microsoft's. If you sit down a user in
front of our current explorer, he/she would be most definitely lost.
While i would say hide the features, they'd still be there, increasing
application size, code complexity, memory requirements, dependencies,
and slowing the app down, and this isn't an ideal solution.
Solution: I really think we should clone the Windows NT 4.0 explorer,
with quicklaunch, but nothing more. Make everything else addins or
compiletime options. The interface really should be more similar to the
windows version of explorer, with nothing new to confuse users, etc.
This will make explorer less buggy and faster, it will also consume less
RAM. Currently explorer is even slower then microsoft's own explorer.
Granted it is an alpha version, but still, these 'new features' are
still getting injected every once and a while, making things even worse,
when time/energy would be better spent working on shell32 or fixing
bugs/optimizing explorer and code cleanup.
Don't get me wrong, i think explorer is great, it's a marvelous piece of
work. And my opinion is one of many, but keep in mind i'm not speaking
for the supergeeks here, i'm speaking for the power users and regular
users, the customer support reps and myself.
Take care, and please don't flame me, martin, or anyone else.
Richard.