Wow, Andrew, thanks so much. Great response. And the "user requirements"
was obviously not followed well when requirements were gathered, as can be
seen by the number of people who are irritated by the changes. I'll check
out the links you sent.

And thanks for filling in about the lives of MVPs, I did not realize these
things.

Thanks again. Catherine

"Andrew McLaren" wrote:
[color=blue]
> "Catherine" <Catherine@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote ...[color=green]
> >I see that the delete icon has been removed from the toolbar for windows
> > explorer. Several questions:
> > 1. how can I get it back?
> > 2. why was it removed? (what user requirements were gathered?)
> > 3. a string of questions was asked (see "Toolbar Icons") regarding this
> > same question, but none of them were answered by a Microsoft MVP person
> > (or
> > similar). Why is that?[/color]
>
> These are good questions, I look forward to seeing some answers.
>
> My 2 cents ... the Toolbar in the Vista Explorer is not configurable. This
> was soon discovered by developers who wanted to add buttons for their own
> applications. You can add a 3rd party application "command bar" to Explorer;
> but you cannot modify the Windows-supplied Toolbar.
>
> As to why, I have no idea. I suspect (and it's only a guess) the Shell team
> were trying for a simpler, more orthogonal user experience; where there are
> fewer controls, and a tendency towards only one way to achieve anything. If
> you want to manipulate an object, such as a file, you select and right-click
> the object itself, then choose your action from the context-menu. Whereas
> toolbar commands in Vista are more for manipulating the whole environment
> (Organise, Views), rather than individual objects in that environment. But
> then, they went and messed it up by adding Open, Email, etc to the toolbar
> when a file is selected. Why Open for a file, but not Delete? I dunno. Maybe
> user pressure during the beta, diluted the original, clean design ...
> pragmatics often over-rule theoretical purity in Microsoft design (not
> always a good thing, either).
>
> Personally I think the new Explorer is messy, and needs a big usability
> overhaul. But even so, it is reasonably usable, today - better than
> Nautilus, in Gnome!
>
> As to MVPs replying ... be aware that MVPs are just ordinary folks, hanging
> out in their spare time. They have absolutely no formal obligation to
> Microsoft, or anyone else, to answer any questions at all. And in no way are
> they official voices for Microsoft (I speak as an MVP myself - although not
> in the Vista product specialty). They have full-time jobs of their own, and
> they don't get paid for answering questions in newsgroups. And
> microsoft.public.windows.vista.general is a particularly busy group, so it's
> hard to keep up. The more interesting question is: why are there so few
> Microsoft employees, and especially Program Managers, taking part in
> discussions to explain design decisions?
>
> Anyway, you can use the Communities mechanism to make suggestions to
> Microsoft, as described here:
> [url]http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/library/gallery/components/wn/3/locales/help/help_en-US.htm#GiveMSFeedback[/url]
> "Suggestions for Microsoft" is enabled in
> microsoft.public.windows.vista.general, if you use the web interface:
> [url]http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx[/url]
>
> While it might be nice if the internal Microsoft folks were more forthcoming
> with info on design decisions, there are at least a few blogs with dirty
> laundry revealed. For the Shell, there's:
> [url]http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/default.aspx[/url]
> and
> [url]http://shellrevealed.com/[/url]
> If you dig deep enough you might find some background info there. There are
> also a couple of shell-oriented forums, which might give better answers.
>
> Hope it helps,
> --
> Andrew McLaren
> amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au
>
>
>
>
>[/color]