[stalkerman]

I've not tried Win 11 but this is looking much nicer than the Windows 10 explorer.

I've always felt there's far too much going on with Win 10's explorer and don't use half of it. The left navigation pane is a clutter and when you insert a USB device it you end up with it appearing twice often at two different levels. Items often appear in the quick access by themselves and the ribbon looks like they just selected the menu items but didn't bother to check if it actually made UX sense.

So I'm glad to see that on first glance these issues appear to have been addressed in Files.

[vladvasiliu]

I don't use Windows much, mostly just for gaming, but I do have Win11 and the issues you describe with the Explorer are still there.

I've never understood the reasoning of the reorganization that happened in 10, in particular why some things would end up showing twice.

I know in Windows 10 you could remove some of the clutter by editing the registry (which would be helfpully undone by some updates). Don't know if it's still the case in 11.

[pjmlp]

A mix of too many cooks, I would guess.

The Windows 10 file explorer architecture traces back to the XP one, with several COM extension points, and it got some re-architecture on post vista as they doubled down on using COM for what were originally .NET based ideas for Longhorn.

For example the File/Open common dialog became COM based as well.

On Windows 11, from what I have read they did a full WinUI 3.0 reboot (the migration of UWP COM on top of Win32), losing half of the features in the process.

So far I still consider Windows 11 as the next Vista/Windows 8, and am as eager to update as on those versions.