Windows 11 is so bad. It's worse than Vista. Microsoft took everything decent about Windows after the Windows 8 debacle and decided if it works it needs to break.
It's unfortunate. Microsoft had the talent to have premier products but is stuck in second or third on everything.
Secondly, they're preloading the executable resident in memory to accelerate click to open, similar to what Chrome Browser does on Windows (and websites when browsing)
I don't perceive this as "fixing bad performance, given explorer has never been slow to open for me, but rather further optimizing the experience.
The File Explorer in Windows has so much tech debt behind it.
It's quite obvious to see which parts are still Win32 and which are XAML. The two different context menus are a well-known example, but one that really annoys me is the Home view vs. the This PC view.
If you make Explorer open with the This PC view by default, you get a blinding flash of white every time you create a new tab in dark mode. That doesn't happen with the Home view which has been updated to XAML.
It's one of the many things you experience day to day that really makes me disappointed in the level of quality in modern Windows.
> We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View.
Not a big deal. I use Windows only a few times over an RDP connection (VMs of a customer of mine) so it's a bit slow anyway and this optimization is not going to make it much faster. A more impactful change:
> We’ve moved Compress to ZIP file, Copy as Path, Set as Desktop Background, and Rotate Right, and Rotate Left into a new Manage file flyout. [...] Note, the name Manage file may change in a future Insider update.
Damn, Microsoft really needs someone who cares to run Windows. Feels like they haven’t had that since 7. Seems like every change for the last 10+ years has just been to take high quality existing applications and replace them with modern junk that has half the functionality and none of the polish. Task manager, explorer, calculator, anything in control panel, even solitaire!
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 29.3 ms ] threadIt's unfortunate. Microsoft had the talent to have premier products but is stuck in second or third on everything.
Appropriate, if funny: https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_o...
"Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271 (Dev & Beta Channels)"
Secondly, they're preloading the executable resident in memory to accelerate click to open, similar to what Chrome Browser does on Windows (and websites when browsing)
I don't perceive this as "fixing bad performance, given explorer has never been slow to open for me, but rather further optimizing the experience.
Performance wasn’t an issue 20 years ago. Now it is ???
That takes effort!
It's quite obvious to see which parts are still Win32 and which are XAML. The two different context menus are a well-known example, but one that really annoys me is the Home view vs. the This PC view.
If you make Explorer open with the This PC view by default, you get a blinding flash of white every time you create a new tab in dark mode. That doesn't happen with the Home view which has been updated to XAML.
It's one of the many things you experience day to day that really makes me disappointed in the level of quality in modern Windows.
Not a big deal. I use Windows only a few times over an RDP connection (VMs of a customer of mine) so it's a bit slow anyway and this optimization is not going to make it much faster. A more impactful change:
> We’ve moved Compress to ZIP file, Copy as Path, Set as Desktop Background, and Rotate Right, and Rotate Left into a new Manage file flyout. [...] Note, the name Manage file may change in a future Insider update.
So it's an extra click to compress files.
Some examples:
* Restoring the Explorer navigation bar: https://windhawk.net/mods/explorer-frame-classic
* Making Explorer behave more like Vista/7: https://windhawk.net/mods/aerexplorer
* Fixing the white flash on a new Explorer tab in dark mode: https://windhawk.net/mods/fix-explorer-white-flash
* Restoring old-style context menus: https://windhawk.net/mods/disable-immersive-context-menus
* Even using classic non-Aero themes in Win11: https://windhawk.net/mods/classic-theme-enable
I haven’t tried this myself yet. I’m unwilling to inject code into system processes on a work VM.
But I can’t help wondering if a better path for performance for Microsoft would be lighter code, not trying to preload it.
Again, the end user pays for it, through hardware and power needed for this "solution".