Microsoft Open-Sources Original File Manager From the 1990s So It Can Run On Windows 10 (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File Manager was a replacement for managing files through MS-DOS, and allowed Windows users to copy, move, delete, and search for files. While it's a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today. The source code is available on GitHub, and is maintained by Microsoft veteran Craig Wittenberg under the MIT license. Wittenberg copied the File Manager code from Windows NT 4 back in 2007, and has been maintaining it before open sourcing it recently. It's a testament to the backward compatibility of Windows itself, especially that this was originally included in Windows more than 20 years ago.

Comments

Still not better than Norton Commander

[bigmacx]

...THE reference file management tool for PC geeks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Commander

I still use Midnight Commander on Linux from time to time, especially for quick side-by-side file/dir moves (the viewing of diff's between them is nice) and searching for content inside lots of files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander

Re:Still not better than Norton Commander

[Anonymous Coward]

XTree Gold was much better

Re:Port to iOS please

[klashn]

In a universe where the 99% ruin it for the 1%. Hide file extensions for 99% of people that don't need them, let the 1% un-check the box.

Why Windows hides file extensions

[steveha]

i never understood why windows defaults to "hide extensions for known file types"

I agree it was never a good idea. IMHO it was done because the file extensions are ugly.

On the Mac, every file has a "resource fork" (I guess on OS X it's no longer properly a "resource fork" but there is something equivalent) and the type of the file is coded in a spot that the OS knows how to read but which the user doesn't see. So the user types any name, and the icon is the right icon and the user just sees the icon and the chosen name.

On Windows and Linux, the file systems don't have this "resource fork" idea, so the obvious place to encode the type of file is the extension. But the extension is user-visible.

Linux uses the techniques pioneered in UNIX to just identify a file no matter what its name is. If it's an ELF binary, it will start with certain bytes arranged a certain way; if it's a LibreOffice document, it will start with different bytes, etc. It's trickier but more reliable: you can rename a LibreOffice document to not have its extension any more, and your file manager can still do the right thing when you double-click on it.

But Windows just uses the extension.

Well, hiding the extension makes Windows more like the Mac. The icon is correct, the user just sees the filename chosen by the user, life is great.

But users are used to seeing extensions and don't worry about them much. And there was a form of attack where a Trojan Horse file would have a name like "Important Document.doc.exe" and hope the user would open it. If Windows hides the extension, then just the ".exe" part is hidden, and the user just sees "Important Document.doc" (and as I said the user is used to seeing extensions and doesn't freak out that most documents have no visible extension but this one does).

These days, by default, Windows hides "system" directories and anything else that an uninformed user shouldn't touch. If I have to use Windows, I make sure to turn on seeing file extensions, disable hiding system directories, etc.