Return of Common Sense
Posted: Saturday, November 07, 2009
by Andy Thomas
BigAngryDog.BlogSpot.com
Not a lot people may know this, but Microsoft made a major change to Windows Explorer in Vista. Have you noticed?
It is no longer integrated with Internet Explorer!
A few may remember that this whole thing was the subject of a series of civil actions filed against Microsoft by the United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states back in 1998. Despite this, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer have remained married to each other ever since-until recently that is.
This approach of mashing together file and web browsing into a single application was, unfortunately to my mind, adopted by others, notably Konqueror for the Linux KDE desktop. I was pleasently surprised, therefore, to discover recently that KDE's new file manager, Dolphin, is in fact a dedicated file manager and doesn't compromise itself by trying to be a web browser at the same time. How refreshing, I thought, that KDE is no longer emulating what Microsoft does and has returned to common sense!
It quickly it occured to me to take a closer look at Windows Explorer in Vista also, just to see if any changes had been going on there as well. Sure enough, when I typed a web page URL into it's address bar, it launched Internet Explorer as a separate application rather than rendering the page itself.
Wikipedia, as usual, has some information on the subject, notably that the two applications also become separated on XP when IE7 is installed...
"Also, with the release of Windows Vista & Server 2008 and Windows Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP, Internet Explorer is no longer integrated with Windows Explorer. Unlike older versions, Windows Explorer does not host Internet Explorer controls in its own process, rather it launches a new process when necessary. In Windows Vista and Server 2008 (and in Windows XP as well if IE7 is installed), Windows Explorer no longer displays web pages, and IE7 does not support use as a file manager, although one will separately launch the other as necessary."
Whatever the reason, I applaud the fact that common sense has been restored. Less is certainly more in this case.
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Top-level comments on this article: (9 total)Very interesting article Andy. Welcome to Searchwarp and looking forward to reading more of your articles. Thanks for sharing this. Best to you, ~Nenita~
Hey Nenita! Thanks for the message.
Hi Andy,Thank you for posting this article and welcome to SearchWarp!Best Regards,Mark
Hello Andy,I would like to thank your for the article, I really liked it.Welcome to SearchWarp! =)Regards
Hey Andy,Welcome to SearchWarp! I appreciate your article...I really despite using Windows explorer in vista....I think is not reliable and it is really slow so I stick to Firefox...but thanks for the artice :)
Hey Andy,Welcome to SearchWarp! I appreciate your article...I really despite using Windows explorer in vista....I think is not reliable and it is really slow so I stick to Firefox...but thanks for the artice :)
Thank you for this article. It clarified a lot for me. I, too, always wondered what the difference was between Windows explorer and IE. Now I understand!
Welcome to Searchwarp and thanks for this interesting piece. Marijo
Thanks for the comments guys. It's great to be here.
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