Windows Vista
Interview with Jim Allchin, Microsoft co-president
I asked him about the changes Microsoft has made over time to the Windows Vista shell. You may recall that Vista was to have originally included the WinFS storage engine, but after that was removed, the company still planned to replace the XP-style special shell folders like My Documents and My Pictures with virtual folders. Now, that's being scaled back again, and the special shell folders are back, though virtual folders will still be in the system, albeit in a less prominent role.
"We got feedback that it was too jarring moving to virtual folder visualizations," he told me. "So it's changed even since the December CTP. So now, you get your folders, and you get search. Before, you got search, but you had to work to get to the folders."
"Basically, people are used to folders," he said. "It was so much of a dramatic change that people didn't understand it. There will also be virtual folders, and you can type searches. But if you just want to see your folders, they're still there. We will have bugs, even in the next CTP, around saving virtual folders. But we're not taking virtual folders away."
