[ros-general] Ok guys...

[Richard Campbell]

Ok, after my slight anger on IRC, i've decided to write a constructive 
email and post it here.  Please note this is my opinion, though others 
may agree with me.

First of all, Martin, let me say i have the utmost respect for you and 
your work.

However, it has come to my attention that the explorer clone is starting 
to become a mess.  It has too many 'features' built in.  The compaints i 
have are:

1)  Too many 'ways' to browse a users computer.  You have all those 
buttons at the toolbar, why not just make those features into shell 
extensions or at the very LEAST compiletime options.  Explorer needs 
only 1 way to browse directories/files.  (Which should be whichever way 
that closely resembles microsoft's windows, and by all means winefile 
and explorer should be seperate applications.)  Among the features that 
need to go are:  The web support, Registry browser, NT Object File 
System or whatever the hell it's called, The 'shell browser' or whatever 
it is, The little bar above the Status bar should go.  The Interface 
shouldn't be MDI, as microsoft's is not.
2)  The toolbar has nothing useful.  The windows explorer toolbar has 
back, forward, and up buttons for example, to browse the users 
computer.  Our explorer has none of these.
3)  The web support needs to go.  I don't know what all was done, but 
web support causes alot of potential vulnerabilities.  Just look at 
microsoft's windows, and even IF it didn't, loading IE/mozilla every 
time explorer starts is a WASTE.

Normally i'd stand back, work on my own explorer clone, but this IS 
ReactOS, our goal is to clone windows, we need to keep our UI as 
consistent as possible with microsoft's.  If you sit down a user in 
front of our current explorer, he/she would be most definitely lost.  
While i would  say hide the features, they'd still be there, increasing 
application size, code complexity, memory requirements, dependencies, 
and slowing the app down, and this isn't an ideal solution.

Solution:  I really think we should clone the Windows NT 4.0 explorer, 
with quicklaunch, but nothing more.  Make everything else addins or 
compiletime options.  The interface really should be more similar to the 
windows version of explorer, with nothing new to confuse users, etc.  
This will make explorer less buggy and faster, it will also consume less 
RAM.  Currently explorer is even slower then microsoft's own explorer.  
Granted it is an alpha version, but still, these 'new features' are 
still getting injected every once and a while, making things even worse, 
when time/energy would be better spent working on shell32 or fixing 
bugs/optimizing explorer and code cleanup.

Don't get me wrong, i think explorer is great, it's a marvelous piece of 
work.  And my opinion is one of many, but keep in mind i'm not speaking 
for the supergeeks here, i'm speaking for the power users and regular 
users, the customer support reps and myself.

Take care, and please don't flame me, martin, or anyone else.
Richard.