L
littlenemo
Guest
For as long as I can remember I've been baffled by the 'Folder options' on
the View menu of folders in Windows (I have Windows 98). I've never been
able to get it to work the way I would like, so I've more or less tolerated
its behavior and put up with it. Nor have I been able to find a decent
explanation anywhere of what exactly some of those options do, either from
Microsoft or from the countless Windows support websites I have visited over
the years. I'm not sure if I just don't understand the way it's supposed to
work, or if the program is just not functioning the way it's supposed to.
Maybe someone on a discussion group somewhere can help me out.
First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current Folder'.
But the semantics here are vague and ambiguous. Does this 'look like'
pertain to the 'Large Icons'--'Small Icons'--'List'--'Details' settings...or
something else? No matter how often I have tried to make all of my folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. Then again, if I change the
view to 'List', it doesn't seem to have any effect on subfolders of the
folder I make the change to. If I want the subfolders to have the 'List'
view, I have to go through each of them and manually make the change...which
of course, will subsequently disappear when any change is made to the
contents of the folder. Exasperating, to say the least. But I have put up
with it, while wasting a lot of time clicking on view option settings. The
associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' on the button seems
to mean that by clicking on it, all of the folders on my computer will be
forced to have the same view settings as the ones I have set in the current
window. No such luck!
More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it should
do just that--but it doesn't!
Also under these 'Advanced settings', there is a section for 'Managing pairs
of Web pages and folders' which gives you a set of choices (radio buttons).
For these particular settings, all you get when you drop the '?' on them is
the pop up 'No Help topic is associated with this item'. Great. I guess
it's supposed to be clear what is meant by each of the choices, but it
certainly isn't to me. My initial assumption was that they are referring to
Web pages which are 'saved' as 1) an HTML file, and 2) the folder which has a
similar name and contains images, etc. I save a lot of Web pages for
reference and leisurely offline viewing, and initially I saved them as the
'pair'--file and folder. But because of the way in which folders and files
are organized within a folder, it was inevitable that I would inadvertently
allow the file and folder to get separated and 'lost' from one another when
organizing and moving them around from folder to folder and drive to drive.
Then I discovered how to save the Web page as a single (MIME-encoded) file
(having the .mht extension and which Microsoft refers to as 'Web-archive'
format). This more or less solved my problem of losing the 'folder'
associated with the HTML file. Later on, I discovered the 'Managing pairs of
Web pages and folders' section which seems to offer the option of managing
the 'pair' in several ways. But again, there appears to be ambiguity without
sufficient explanation to resolve it. For example, the first choice listed
says 'Show and manage the pair as a single file', and the third choice says
'Show both parts but manage as a single file'. (?). For the life of me, I
can't distinguish these 2 choices. The second choice, 'Show both parts and
manage them individually' appears to be the 'default' that I was originally
saddled with. I don't remember if this radio button was the one originally
checked, but currently I have the first choice selected--'Show and manage the
pair as a single file', but I suspect that doesn't work the way I think it
should since my earliest 'saves' as the file-folder pair still get
'separated' inadvertently (i.e. they have to be managed individually). So,
either these options do not work as it seems, or they do not mean what I
think they do.
One reason I bring this up is that for some time now I have been considering
using Firefox instead of IE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a cursory reading
of the Help files for Firefox seemed to indicate that Firefox (v.2.0) does
not save Web pages in the single-file, MIME-encoded .mht format, and I would
hate to give that up, given the number of Web pages I save (and manually
manage). I'm not sure if Firefox has provisions, as IE seems to have (even
though they appear not to work) for handling Web pages in a unified, clean
way. Even with all of its problems, I would probably stick with IE simply
because of the choices it gives with regard to saving Web pages--if I could
get it to do what I think it should do. So it anybody out there can clarify
the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
--
little nemo in slumberland
the View menu of folders in Windows (I have Windows 98). I've never been
able to get it to work the way I would like, so I've more or less tolerated
its behavior and put up with it. Nor have I been able to find a decent
explanation anywhere of what exactly some of those options do, either from
Microsoft or from the countless Windows support websites I have visited over
the years. I'm not sure if I just don't understand the way it's supposed to
work, or if the program is just not functioning the way it's supposed to.
Maybe someone on a discussion group somewhere can help me out.
First of all, I would like the view in all of my folders to look exactly
alike one another. My preference is the 'List' view. Under 'Folder Options'
on the 'View' tab, in the section 'Folder Views', it says 'You can make all
your folders look the same' along with a button labled 'Like Current Folder'.
But the semantics here are vague and ambiguous. Does this 'look like'
pertain to the 'Large Icons'--'Small Icons'--'List'--'Details' settings...or
something else? No matter how often I have tried to make all of my folders
present me with the 'List' view by using this button, it fails. Even for the
particular folder which was open and from which I tried to make this setting,
I will often come back to this folder later after some change has been made,
and the 'Large Icons' will have reappeared. Then again, if I change the
view to 'List', it doesn't seem to have any effect on subfolders of the
folder I make the change to. If I want the subfolders to have the 'List'
view, I have to go through each of them and manually make the change...which
of course, will subsequently disappear when any change is made to the
contents of the folder. Exasperating, to say the least. But I have put up
with it, while wasting a lot of time clicking on view option settings. The
associated help tip which pops up when you drop the '?' on the button seems
to mean that by clicking on it, all of the folders on my computer will be
forced to have the same view settings as the ones I have set in the current
window. No such luck!
More ambiguity: In the 'Advanced settings' window of this tab, there is a
checkbox for 'Remember each folder's view settings', and for as long as I can
remember I have had this checkbox 'set'...but it seems to have absolutely no
effect upon retaining the settings I want. The associated help tip which
pops up when you drop the '?' (help) on it seems to indicate that it should
do just that--but it doesn't!
Also under these 'Advanced settings', there is a section for 'Managing pairs
of Web pages and folders' which gives you a set of choices (radio buttons).
For these particular settings, all you get when you drop the '?' on them is
the pop up 'No Help topic is associated with this item'. Great. I guess
it's supposed to be clear what is meant by each of the choices, but it
certainly isn't to me. My initial assumption was that they are referring to
Web pages which are 'saved' as 1) an HTML file, and 2) the folder which has a
similar name and contains images, etc. I save a lot of Web pages for
reference and leisurely offline viewing, and initially I saved them as the
'pair'--file and folder. But because of the way in which folders and files
are organized within a folder, it was inevitable that I would inadvertently
allow the file and folder to get separated and 'lost' from one another when
organizing and moving them around from folder to folder and drive to drive.
Then I discovered how to save the Web page as a single (MIME-encoded) file
(having the .mht extension and which Microsoft refers to as 'Web-archive'
format). This more or less solved my problem of losing the 'folder'
associated with the HTML file. Later on, I discovered the 'Managing pairs of
Web pages and folders' section which seems to offer the option of managing
the 'pair' in several ways. But again, there appears to be ambiguity without
sufficient explanation to resolve it. For example, the first choice listed
says 'Show and manage the pair as a single file', and the third choice says
'Show both parts but manage as a single file'. (?). For the life of me, I
can't distinguish these 2 choices. The second choice, 'Show both parts and
manage them individually' appears to be the 'default' that I was originally
saddled with. I don't remember if this radio button was the one originally
checked, but currently I have the first choice selected--'Show and manage the
pair as a single file', but I suspect that doesn't work the way I think it
should since my earliest 'saves' as the file-folder pair still get
'separated' inadvertently (i.e. they have to be managed individually). So,
either these options do not work as it seems, or they do not mean what I
think they do.
One reason I bring this up is that for some time now I have been considering
using Firefox instead of IE. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a cursory reading
of the Help files for Firefox seemed to indicate that Firefox (v.2.0) does
not save Web pages in the single-file, MIME-encoded .mht format, and I would
hate to give that up, given the number of Web pages I save (and manually
manage). I'm not sure if Firefox has provisions, as IE seems to have (even
though they appear not to work) for handling Web pages in a unified, clean
way. Even with all of its problems, I would probably stick with IE simply
because of the choices it gives with regard to saving Web pages--if I could
get it to do what I think it should do. So it anybody out there can clarify
the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
--
little nemo in slumberland
83C54AB-E95E-4793-8DF4-E8DA411BDCEB@microsoft.com...