Work with Explorer Views

We've looked briefly at the left side of Windows Explorer; now let's concentrate on the right sidethe Details pane. You can customize the display of information here by using one of the following six views:

• List

• Details

• Thumbnails

• Tiles

• Icons

• Filmstrip

If you don't see the Filmstrip choice from your list of the folder views, I'll explain why in the section entitled "Understand the New Views" later. To select a view, you can click the View menu or the Views button on the toolbar, as shown in Figure 7-2.

Figure 7-2. The Views icon displays a drop-down menu of views.

You are probably familiar with the List and Details views from earlier versions of Windows. These two views are essentially the same, except that the Details view displays information about the file's attributes, such as the creation date and modification date. One handy feature of the Details view is the ability to sort. You can sort any of the items in the Details view by simply clicking a column heading. For instance, if you want to find a letter you wrote in June 2003, just click the Date Modified heading. This puts the document list in chronological order (either ascending or descending), so the June 2003 letter should be easy to find.

The Thumbnails view shows a large picture icon and also previews the contents of a file if at all possible. For example, you should get a good idea of what a picture is if looking at a thumbnail, and it will also display a still frame of a movie file such as .mpeg.

The Thumbnail view can be especially effective for Web developers and others who work with large numbers of graphics files whose filenames are oftentimes something like this DSC00358. A small thumbnail helps users find the right graphic at a glance instead of having to decipher the filename.

Now, why wouldn't you want to use the Thumbnails view for all folders? Sometimes, it's a matter of speed. Windows has to actually create the thumbnails for all files in a given folder, and if you have hundreds of graphics in a single location, this can take some time.

There's really not much to say about the Icons view, other than there isn't a choice between Large Icons and Small Icons as with previous versions of Windows. The icons are easy to double-click and will give you a premonition about what application will open the file.