Sure, Microsoft made
tons of changes under the hood (covered in subsequent chapters), but to those
familiar with, say, Windows XP, the most immediately apparent changes to
the operating system have been made to Windows Explorer and its cohorts.
As a result, the sensation most seasoned Windows users will likely experience
when they open Vista??™s Explorer for the first time is...disorientation.
Figure 2-1 shows Windows Explorer as it appears right out of the box.
The formal Windows Explorer shortcut is buried deep in the Start menu,
under All Programs ??? Accessories, but you can open an Explorer window
by double-clicking any folder icon on the desktop or selecting one of the
locations on the righthand column of the Start menu (e.g., Documents, Pictures,
Music, Games). Mercifully, Microsoft finally dropped the cutesy
???My??? prefix used in earlier versions of Windows, so the My Pictures folder is
now merely Pictures.
While the basic layout is more or less the same as versions of Explorer dating
back to 1995, the menu and the title bar are both gone, replaced with
many subtle??”almost hidden??”controls that surprisingly offer more functionality
than any previous version. But that??™s only the beginning. The righthand
pane of the window more closely resembles a restaurant menu than a
list of files, which does end up making it look more friendly, if a little weird.
Shell Tweaks | 23
Shell Tweaks
And to the left, where you??™d expect to find the folder tree, resides the Favorite
Links pane (akin to the ???Places??? bar found in some file dialog windows
in Vista).
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