Keyboard based navigation in folder pane ...

Question

Hi,

in earlier versions of the Explorer (Vista, Xp,...) I could navigate through the folders in the folder pane on the left side. Going up and down, the contents of each folder was updated automatically in the right view. Thereby, I could get a fast overview of each folder's content. But since Win7, the contents of each folder is only shown, if I click on it - this slows me down and is very unproductive.

Where can I enable the "old" behavior? Is there any flag or secret key in the registry I can disable/enable?

Thanks

Konrad

Answer 1

Like you, I don't like that the stimulus for displaying things in the file pane is different either, but alas we seem to be stuck with this behavior.  There's virtually no configurability in the way Explorer interacts.

You can hit return on the folder to make it show in the right pane, then continue moving around the navigation pane with the arrow keys.  Space bar works too, but it goes "ding".  This is not as efficient as just moving the highlight around used to be.

FYI, the Explorer changes has indirectly and adversely affected how the mouse scroll wheel works, too.  Now, unless one installs a 3rd party app to redirect mouse events, it almost ALWAYS seems like the mouse wheel scrolls exactly the wrong window.  Fortunately there's a feeware app out there that helps a lot with that:  Wizmouse.

-Noel