Vista Explorer tricks

The Windows Explorer in Vista leaves out two important features from previous versions:

The up-folder icon is missing from the toolbar. Somebody at MS got the great idea that they're going to copy the behavior of the Linux File Browser, where the folder hierarchy is spread out across the address bar, like

Computer ~ DRV1_VOL1 (C:) ~ Share ~ Sysinternals

and to go up one level, you need to click on the folder to the left of your current location. Fortunately, you can press Alt-Up Arrow to move up one level. Intuitive? I don't think so. And the Linux version also has the up-arrow icon on the toolbar. Intuitive? Yup.

The second, most irritating omission is that you can't easily resize column widths - there is no column sizer like prior Windows versions, or even Access or Excel for that matter. You can sort by a column, or drag columns into different orders, but the only resize options are Resize to Fit, for either the current column or all columns.

Here, you have to right-click on the gray title bar and select More... and at the Choose Details dialog, you select the column to be resized and then enter the number of pixels in the little box. How many pixels should it be? Your guess is a good as mine and YMMV, but using 1024x768 resolution, it seems that 166 gives a reasonably good view for file names. I give this feature a big zero for ease-of-use. Once again, the Linux File Browser has the same good old column resizer feature that users are accustomed to having.

After five years of development, you'd think they would have made things easier to use, instead of more difficult. It's sad that I even have to post these "tricks".