5 ms·

I was just thinking this myself. Windows 8 is moving towards a tablet-like structure, they need to go all the way on this and get rid of the filesystem for 90%

I was just thinking this myself. Windows 8 is moving towards a tablet-like structure, they need to go all the way on this and get rid of the filesystem for 90% of users. Open almost any Windows laptop, and you'll see users who basically think of the hard drive as a file dumping ground. You'll see files stored on the Desktop, or everything just goes into one big directory. How many conversations have you had where you ask "Where did you save the file?" and the reply is "I don't know, just the place that it says when I press save"? Windows should have had a services infrastructure, where programs explicitly define an export (how to access files the program has generated) and import (which files the program can handle). Users don't really think of files by directory but by type, either Word documents or photos or whatever. The file system should just be a dialog box which is essentially a search. "Show me Word documents I edited in the last 5 days." "Show me all my photos that I took in Hawaii." That's how users think about data.

Meai 15y ago
Interesting idea! There is no indication of what "My Documents" contains. What do I put in there? What is a "document" anyway? I'm frequently annoyed by files being saved somewhere I don't remember, or into huge folder hierarchies where I troublesomely navigate into. This is just simply stuff a user shouldn't need to think about. Couple your suggestions with a proper realtime search engine like we have with http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/ and this could be good.
- unconed 15y ago
  My Documents is the worst possible solution to "I can't find my files." First of all, they designate only one part of the visible filesystem as "safe", when it should be the opposite. Everything that's obviously accessible should be safe, and system-critical stuff should require going elsewhere. Secondly, there is nothing personal about "My Documents". Every program routinely dumps files there that you can't do anything with directly. Game saves are the worst offenders here. They're cryptically named and you can't double click them like every other file. And then people complain that normal users don't understand files.
contextfree 15y ago
It looks like they are in fact implementing something at least kinda-sorta like what you describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I (skip to around 3:30)
WiseWeasel 15y ago
This reminds me of BeOS's metadata database filesystem, taken to its logical conclusion on the front end: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-filesystem.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-fil...
super_mario 15y ago
Mac OS X already has that, but I still would not like to see the filesystem hidden from me. It's just too valuable idea for it to go away and it takes us further away from general computing to turning our computers into appliances owned by our OS vendor.
- archgoon 15y ago
  I think the idea of the parent poster is that there would be no file system (at least not in the sense of a tree hierarchy of directories), just a large database with some SQL like language exposed through the GUI.
  - shabble 15y ago
    All manner of people have suggested and planned ways of doing this, but as yet, none of them are really any good. See: http://nascent.freeshell.org/programming/TagFS/ http://nascent.freeshell.org/programming/TagFS/ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/WinFS https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/WinFS and many more.
    - super_mario 15y ago
      Even though Mac OS X filesystem is not a relational database, it does support a query language that allows you to search for built in or user defined attributes and their values. This search functionality is available system wide (Spotlight search box), from any file open dialog or from the command line. For example things like this are possible: Find me all pictures I tool this year and where I used flash, and aperture f4: kind:image fnumber:4 date:"this year" flash:1 You type this in either spotlight or search box on open file dialog. You can do the same from the command line mdfind -interpret "kind:image fnumber:4 date:"this year" flash:1" The nice thing about the mdfind command is that you can restrict the search to a directory of your choice only. Some people pay good money for photo organizers on Mac OS X, not knowing they already have this functionality built in. And finding what attributes are available is not that hard either: mdimport -X prints the entire metadata schema.
  - 15y ago
GeneralMaximus 15y ago
I would say having logically named directories and a strict HIG could solve this. When I hit "Save" on a Mac, the file picker shows me a field where I can type a file name, and a drop down where I can choose between "Documents", "Pictures", "Movies", etc. or the last directory this particular program saved a file to. Most of the time the application will even pick a sensible default location. Only if I click the small arrow at the right of the drop down to I see the advanced file chooser. On Windows, when I hit "Save", I get the advanced file picker by default. Unless the application is smart enough to set a sensible default location -- which most Windows applications are not -- the Windows file picker defaults to Desktop. This is the reason most people have all kinds of shit on their Windows desktops. I can search for files on Windows now, so at least Windows has one thing right.

Meai 15y ago

Interesting idea! There is no indication of what "My Documents" contains. What do I put in there? What is a "document" anyway? I'm frequently annoyed by files being saved somewhere I don't remember, or into huge folder hierarchies where I troublesomely navigate into. This is just simply stuff a user shouldn't need to think about. Couple your suggestions with a proper realtime search engine like we have with http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/ and this could be good.

unconed 15y ago
My Documents is the worst possible solution to "I can't find my files." First of all, they designate only one part of the visible filesystem as "safe", when it should be the opposite. Everything that's obviously accessible should be safe, and system-critical stuff should require going elsewhere. Secondly, there is nothing personal about "My Documents". Every program routinely dumps files there that you can't do anything with directly. Game saves are the worst offenders here. They're cryptically named and you can't double click them like every other file. And then people complain that normal users don't understand files.

contextfree 15y ago

It looks like they are in fact implementing something at least kinda-sorta like what you describe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I (skip to around 3:30)

WiseWeasel 15y ago

This reminds me of BeOS's metadata database filesystem, taken to its logical conclusion on the front end: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-filesystem.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-fil...

super_mario 15y ago

Mac OS X already has that, but I still would not like to see the filesystem hidden from me. It's just too valuable idea for it to go away and it takes us further away from general computing to turning our computers into appliances owned by our OS vendor.

archgoon 15y ago
I think the idea of the parent poster is that there would be no file system (at least not in the sense of a tree hierarchy of directories), just a large database with some SQL like language exposed through the GUI.
- shabble 15y ago
  All manner of people have suggested and planned ways of doing this, but as yet, none of them are really any good. See: http://nascent.freeshell.org/programming/TagFS/ http://nascent.freeshell.org/programming/TagFS/ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/WinFS https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/WinFS and many more.
  - super_mario 15y ago
    Even though Mac OS X filesystem is not a relational database, it does support a query language that allows you to search for built in or user defined attributes and their values. This search functionality is available system wide (Spotlight search box), from any file open dialog or from the command line. For example things like this are possible: Find me all pictures I tool this year and where I used flash, and aperture f4: kind:image fnumber:4 date:"this year" flash:1 You type this in either spotlight or search box on open file dialog. You can do the same from the command line mdfind -interpret "kind:image fnumber:4 date:"this year" flash:1" The nice thing about the mdfind command is that you can restrict the search to a directory of your choice only. Some people pay good money for photo organizers on Mac OS X, not knowing they already have this functionality built in. And finding what attributes are available is not that hard either: mdimport -X prints the entire metadata schema.
- 15y ago

GeneralMaximus 15y ago

I would say having logically named directories and a strict HIG could solve this. When I hit "Save" on a Mac, the file picker shows me a field where I can type a file name, and a drop down where I can choose between "Documents", "Pictures", "Movies", etc. or the last directory this particular program saved a file to. Most of the time the application will even pick a sensible default location. Only if I click the small arrow at the right of the drop down to I see the advanced file chooser. On Windows, when I hit "Save", I get the advanced file picker by default. Unless the application is smart enough to set a sensible default location -- which most Windows applications are not -- the Windows file picker defaults to Desktop. This is the reason most people have all kinds of shit on their Windows desktops. I can search for files on Windows now, so at least Windows has one thing right.