How to get back preview within file pane of Explorer

[*Vanguard*]

Back when I was using Windows 2000, Explorer was configured to show web
content on the leftside of the file pane (the rightmost pane). What this
did was to show the properties of the object selected. If I selected a
drive, I could see the used and free space on it (without having to
right-click on the drive to look at Properties). If I clicked on a file,
same thing, I'd see the file size, modified date, and other properties of
the file (again without having to right-click and look at its Properties).
I do NOT want to enable the Details view. I don't care about the attributes
and details of all files shown in the file list pane. I only want to
immediately and easily see the properties of the selected file or drive.

Also, I could customize the folder to include a Preview on the leftside of
the file pane. This made it handy to make a quick check of what was in a
graphics file. I would use the List view to show all the files (without
details so just the filenames were shown) and I could select a file and
quickly see what image was in that graphic file. This made it handy when
trying to select which photo, clipart, JPEG, or other image that I wanted to
include in a document. The filenames usually indicated the category of the
image, like housexxx, carxxx, boatxxx, and so on where the xxx was some
number. Then when I wanted to insert a car image into a document, I could
simply and very quickly scroll through the sorted file list to find those
files named carxxx. Then I could use the arrow key to select each carxxx
file in turn and see in the Preview inset what image was in that file. This
made it very easy to select an image file. Also, if the image was very busy
or dense so it was hard to see in the Preview inset, I could enlarge the
Preview into its own window to see the image more clearly.

Now the only choice I find is one for Pictures. That gives me a Preview
inset (but at the top of the file pane instead of on the leftside), there
are no properties listed for the selected file, like size and modified date,
and all the files become thumbnails instead of just a list of their
filenames. It is far more difficult to be scrolling through thousands of
thumbnails than thousands of filenames.

I much prefer the older Explorer file pane view where I could see the
details of a selected item on the left (rather than now have to use the
Details view to see far fewer files at a time in the pane). I also miss the
Preview inset (while keeping the files listed by the filenames rather than
by much larger thumbnails. Any way to configure Explorer to go back to this
view mode?

 

[DCC]

If you close the folders with the x in the top of the left side, there
should be a Detail button. If it's not open, click on it to
open/close/open/close.
You can also click on "My Computer" to get the window without the folders.

 

[*Vanguard*]

"DCC" said in news:[email protected]:

If you close the folders with the x in the top of the left side, there
should be a Detail button. If it's not open, click on it to
open/close/open/close.
You can also click on "My Computer" to get the window without the
folders.

What you are talking about is the Explorer Bar. You can choose which one to
view (History, Folders, Search, etc.) by going under the View -> Explorer
Bar menu. (It's a pane, not a bar, and it can be a pain, too.)

If no Explorer Bar is selected (i.e., all choices under View -> Explorer Bar
are deselected), that does NOT get rid of the leftside pane. Instead you
get stuck with the rather stupid task pane which has the Picture Tasks, File
and Folder Tasks, Other Places, and Details sections. With no choices
selected for the Explorer Bar, the task pane shows. I haven't found how to
get rid of the task pane. But then that only gets rid of this superfluous
pane. It does not address the question of how to get back the Preview mode
in the rightside file pane.

In the rightside file pane, I could select to just list the filename
(View -> List). I don't want to see thumbnails. Thousands of files within
a directory take way too long to generate thumbnails. The thumbnails are
too small for me to tell what the image really looks like; for example, if
I'm going through the section of the filenames called housexxx.jpg, too many
look like each other when shown in a tiny thumbnail. I also don't like
thumbnails because far fewer files are displayed at a time. I could
customize the folder view (which creates a desktop.ini file) to add a
Preview to the rightside file pane. This would display a larger image
viewer. I could then quickly select different files in the file list and
better see what the image file might look like. I could also single-click
on a button in the Previewer that would enlarge it so I could really take a
look (rather than have to double-click on the filename). This Previewer
also allowed one-click zoom in/out without having to use a separate button
at the bottom (like the current XP viewer uses) plus it would zoom in where
the mouse was positioned rather than just zoom the entire picture and result
in the area of focus going out of bounds.

The old preview customization in Windows 2000 was very easy to use, let me
keep files shown in a list so I could quickly navigate around, especially
since the filenames would indicate the type of image, I could see a lot more
files at a time using a list than using thumbnails which are often too small
to identify the image, and the Previewer was easier to use in that I could
simply single-click to zoom wherever the mouse was positioned. Closing the
Explorer Bar doesn't get rid of it. Instead you get stuck with a
superfluous task pane instead of a folders, search, or history bar.
Actually I don't want to get rid of the Explorer Bar since I have it
displaying the Folders pane so I can quickly navigate between folders. It
used to be when you used View -> Customize This Folder that you could select
the Preview mode. Now all you get is a fixed set of templates, none of
which I like. Is there any way for me to define a new template from which I
can select when customizing a folder, and in which I can specify to use the
Preview inset (which is in the rightside file pane, not overlaying the
leftside task pane)? It seems that I have *less* customization features in
Windows XP than I had in Windows 2000. All you get is a fixed list of
Microsoft encoded templates. Yeah, like that's useful if none of them match
what you want. That's like "You can paint it any color, so long as it's
black", reportedly said by Henry Ford (but not proven).