Windows 7 Taskforce

Consistent, permament Explorer view preference

Submitted by sfsdfd on June 28, 2009 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Usability

Problem: Explorer offers many views: Small Icons, Large Icons, List, Details, Tiles, Content, etc. This is a good and healthy trend.

Explorer also has an option to apply a particular view to all folders. This is also good.

Windows XP and (I think) Vista also had a checkbox option in the Explorer Properties pane reading: "Don't remember folder view settings." This was a great option; if a user likes seeing only certain details about files, let him see only those details for ALL files, regardless of where they are stored.

However - this option NEVER worked right. Even when it was unchecked, Windows would stubbornly remember that you had asked to see a folder in details view, and would then show you that view the next time you went there. And sometimes, Windows would spontaneously decide that you might like to see icons for a change, and would spontaneously change the view for one or more folders! VERY irritating.

Well, this option has been removed from the Explorer options dialog in Windows 7.

I suppose this is better than offering a non-working feature. However, it would have been much preferable to simply fix the feature! This is still a very useful idea, and it needs to be available (and consistently respected!) in the Explorer interface.

(Of course, even better would be a configuration widget that allows users to specify how they want particular folders viewed... maybe just a two-column list: "show folder X in List view; show folder Y and its subfolders in Details view; and show all other folders in Icon view." But I suppose that's asking too much...?)

Solution: Re-add the "Don't remember folder view settings" to the Explorer preferences menu, and then

Severity: High

Impact: High

Status: Not fixed