Application files not visible in Windows Explorer

[Alex Pfeiffer]

I recently bought via Dell a fast computer with Windows Vista Premium Home
Edition (or so). I use the German settings.

It now happens that an application (Dreamweaver) sees files (....htm,
.....php) that are not visible in Windows Explorer. I can work with these
files (edit, save, close, open), so they apparently really exist and are not
Fata Morganas. But Windows Explorer doesn't show them. It shows only about
50% of the files shown by the application. Since the application sees the
files, I think it is not one of these "show hidden files" options in the
Explorer settings. Besides, I checked every available box for showing
everything.

Similarly, the application (Dreamweaver) shows me folder names (such as
"progrm files") different from those shown by Explorer ("Programme", the
German word for "programs" and thus an imprecise translation of "program
files").

So may be that Explores wants to be good to me and gives me, for some basic
folders, an (imprecise) German translation instead of the real folder name.
But what about the missing files? Any idea what this might be?

Thanks in advance.

Axel

 

[Guest]

It sounds like one of the localization problems. I mean, um... features.
Yeah, features.

Windows Vista is much more strict about what applications can do. For
instance, if a program tries to save a file to C:\Program
Files\Macromedia\DreamWeaver, Vista will not let it. It's a good rule, and
they recommended it in XP (and 2000 and NT), but application developers never
really listened. Vista doesn't give them a choice, but it tries to make it
graceful. For example, Vista tricks the program trying to write the above
directory. The program says "I want to save to C:\Program
Files\Macromedia\DreamWeaver", and Vista says "sure ya do", but behind the
scenes, Vista is really putting the files in a folder like
C:\Users\YourName\Roaming\AppData\Program Files\Macromedia\DreamWeaver (I am
not positive on the exact folder structure, but it's similar to that). This
is the preferred way: documents and files that need to be changed are not
stored in program files for applications.

The program (in your case, DreamWeaver) sees a hybrid of these two folders,
because Windows is trying to make the program happy and keep it from
crashing/complaining about not being able to store wherever it wants. But
when you look, you only see the actual, true contents of the folder. So the
files you think are missing... they are actually in another place altogether.

Vista does the same thing in the registry, to keep programs from writing to
places they shouldn't. It makes for a more secure, less virus-friendly, and
more control over what files are where. But it is a little confusing. In my
humble opinion, Vista shouldn't try to accommodate these programs. It should
do what Mac and Linux have done for a long time: block it completely.
Unfortunately Microsoft is a slave to backwards compatibly, so they are
forced to come up with ways like this virtual redirection or whatever it's
called.

 

[Guest]

While I understand that the Program Files directories remain unblemished by
user modifications, this scheme of Vista's also makes it very difficult to
find things! I saved a template for one of my programs, but when I went to
modify, it took me half an hour to finally locate it in
C:\Users\YourName\Roaming\AppData\Program Files\...

 

[Guest]

I've had the same irritation several times. Even Microsoft own programs
don't follow their own rules: Office Programs before 2007 all stored
templates in the 'wrong' location.