Windows 8 will usher in yet another revision to the file management system used by millions of people.
A blog post today by Microsoft Director of Program Management Alex Simons details at great length the future of the new Explorer interface, and lessons learned from previous versions.
One fascinating aspect brought up from Microsoft collecting hundreds of millions of anonymous usage reports (from Windows users) is that despite having over 200 commands in Explorer, "the top 10 commands represent 81.8% of total usage" (such as paste, properties, copy, and delete). Many commands go unused.
Microsoft found that the context menu from right-clicking an object is usually the main method of entering commands at 54.5 percent, with keyboard shortcuts coming in second at 32.2 percent.
It was found that the command bar--the most visible feature of Vista and 7's Explorer menu--contains two of the top 10 commands used overall in Explorer, and was only used a measly 10.9 percent during file management sessions. Therein lies the opportunity for change, Simons said.
