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File System Browsing (Finder vs. Explorer)

This comparison has been updated for Windows Vista and moved to our new website Mac vs. Windows

Overview

Both Mac OS X and Windows XP offer robust tools for browsing the files and folders on your computer. OS X's file browser is called the Finder, while XP's is called Windows Explorer.

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Mac OS X

OS X's Finder has three different views for Finder windows (Icon view, List view, and Column view), along with a special fourth view called Group view (available only during searching and viewing smart folders). The View buttons in the Finder's toolbar will highlight to show which view you are currently working in.

Icon View

OS X can automatically line up icons for you, or you can freely arrange them. Icon view can display icons at any size between 16 x 16 and 128 x 128. Enabling the "Show icon preview" option (View > Show View Options > Show icon preview) will display icons as document previews, depending on the type (for example, OS X can preview JPEG files, but not HTML). Icon view can display limited file information alongside filenames, such as image dimensions (View > Show View Options > Show item info).

OS X's Icon view with icon previews enabled

List View

In List view, users can expand and collapse nested folders to view their contents. This lets you explore the contents of multiple folders simultaneously in one window. Display of image previews is not available; however, List view will display custom icons (if available). Additional columns of information are optionally available:

  • Size
  • Kind
  • Date created
  • Date modified
  • Version
  • Label
  • Comments

Unfortunately, List view cannot display any other file metadata as a column, even though OS X can store and index lots of additional metadata.


OS X's List view lets you explore the contents of multiple folders in one window

Column View

Column view displays the hierarchy of your filesystem from left to right. Select a folder, and its contents will be displayed in a column to the right. Once you select a file, OS X will display a preview of it (if available), or a large version of the file's icon, along with information about the file. You can show or hide the preview, and a "More Info" button will bring up the file's Get Info window to display additional information. Music and movie files can be previewed live in the preview pane.


OS X's Column view

Group View

When performing a search or viewing a smart folder, the Column view button in the toolbar changes into a Group view button. Since smart folders group together items from multiple locations in the filesystem, Column view navigation could be confusing to the user (since the hierarchy shown would change as you selected different items). Files will be grouped by kind and sorted within their groups alphabetically by default (you can change these behaviors in the folder's View Options). Unfortunately, Group view is restricted to searches and smart folders only - you cannot switch to Group view in regular folders.


Viewing a smart folder in group view

Other Features

OS X lets you label items with a highlight color. You can also change the names of colors to make them more useful - i.e., if you set red to "Work," it will display when you choose red from the color label menu item.

labels.gif

Labels display in all views. Items will continue displaying a label when selected:


The orange dot indicates that the selected item has an orange label

Mounted drives, PC cards and network volumes sport eject icons in Finder window sidebars; burn buttons appear next to unwritten CD-Rs.

Windows XP

XP sports no fewer than six views - Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, Details, and Filmstrip.

The button to select different views does not visually denote which view you are currently in, so you must click it to reveal the drop-down menu that displays your current selection.

Thumbnails View

Thumbnails view displays image previews in place of file icons. It can even preview HTML files, which is impressive. Furthermore, a folder in Thumbnails view will display up to four thumbnails of enclosed images or movies, letting you see some of the folder's contents without having to open it.


XP's Thumbnails view displays image and HTML file previews

Power user tip: Hold shift when switching to Thumbnails view to disable the display of filenames - this lets you focus just on the images. To re-enable filenames, switch to another view and then repeat the process.

Tiles View

Tiles view displays large 48 x 48 icons. Previews will be displayed in the Details pane of the sidebar when a file is selected.


XP's Tiles view

In addition, Tiles view displays metadata information about a file. The information that is displayed will adjust depending on how you have the items sorted. For example, in the below screenshot, Tiles view is sorted by type, so it displays relevant information such as the official name and company of applications ("Show in Groups" is also enabled, see "Other Features"):

wabmig.gif
Hold your mouse over an item to display a tooltip with expanded information

Icon View

Icon view displays your files as regular icons, the size of which is determined in your Display Properties (by default, this is 32 x 32). As with other views, you can sort by Name, Size, Type, or Date Modified.


XP's standard Icon view

List View

Lists all your files by filename only. Although you can sort the list in multiple ways (alphabetically, by filetype, etc.), only file/folder names are displayed.


XP's List view

Details View

Similar to List view, Details view displays files in the same fashion, but adds additional columns for file properties such as Size, Type, and Date Modified.

Power user tip: Double-click on the separator between two column headings to resize the column on the left of the separator such that it can fit all displayed information. Hit control-plus to automatically resize all columns to fit all displayed information.

You can display columns for file metadata, such as Date Picture Taken or Dimensions. The full list of columns you can add is quite extensive:

Filmstrip View

Filmstrip view is designed mainly for folders with lots of images (such as your My Pictures folder). When enabled, it splits the folder window into two pieces. Along the bottom, you'll see a strip of all the files in the folder (icons displayed as image thumbnails for supported filetypes). Select an image file, and a larger preview will be displayed in the top portion of the window, complete with controls to rotate the image. Since XP lets you browse a connected digital camera as if it were just another folder (see Photo Importing), Filmstrip view is a great way to quickly preview all the photos on your camera and rotate them before you import them to your hard drive.


XP's Filmstrip view features large image previews

Other Features

XP's "Show in Groups" feature lets you "group" files into categories based on the way you have those files sorted. For example, if your files are sorted by date and you enable "Show in Groups," files will be split up into groups such as "Today," "Yesterday," "Earlier this week," "Last week," etc. In addition, "Show in Groups" can adapt itself specifically to the contents of the folder. For instance, sorting the My Computer window by type and enabling "Show in Groups" will create groups such as "Hard Disk Drives," "Devices with Removable Storage," etc. Notice how in the below screenshot, the first group is called "Files Stored on This Computer" (since you're in the My Computer window), rather than "File Folders" as it would be called elsewhere.


"Show in Groups," shown here being used in Tiles view

To see a hierarchy of your files and folders, XP users can turn on a Folders pane, which is available in all views. Oddly, enabling the Folders pane disables the Tasks pane; however, one could add a button to enable/disable the Folders pane directly to the toolbar, so both are only a click away.

Conclusion

Mac OS X

  • Icon view supports a huge range of icon sizes
  • Explore the contents of multiple folders in the same window with List view
  • Use Column view to quickly navigate your filesystem's hierarchy
  • Preview audio and video files live in Column view's preview pane
  • Label files with a color label, available in all views
  • List view can only display a limited number of columns, even though files may contain lots of additional metadata
  • Column view can only be sorted alphabetically
  • Group view is only available when viewing a Smart folder or performing a search

Windows XP

  • Preview HTML files
  • Folders in Thumbnails view display up to four thumbnails of their contents
  • Tiles view displays file metadata; can choose which metadata is displayed
  • Use "Show in Groups" to group your files based on certain criteria; available in all views except for List and Filmstrip (for obvious reasons)
  • Details view can display all kinds of file metadata as columns, letting you browse and sort by such information
  • Filmstrip view is a logical design for folders dominated by images; great for working with photos on a digital camera
  • Display a tree view in any view (Folders pane)
  • Six separate views is excessive - Tiles, Icons, and Thumbnails views could all be grouped together into one view with different options

XP's six views are, on the whole, more powerful than OS X's three. XP can preview HTML files directly in the filesystem, a feature OS X lacks; it also has superior sorting and viewing options (Show in Groups, metadata columns in Details view). XP implements its tree view as a pane, meaning you can turn it on or off for any view; OS X only shows hierarchy in List and Column views. XP's Filmstrip view features huge image previews (they scale to fit the space allotted by the window's size) and contains in-line rotating controls.

XP's only true downfall is that working with six separate views can be cumbersome. Tiles and Icons views could be combined, for instance, as their only differences are the size of the icons and the limited display of metadata. This could be further combined with Thumbnails view, so that XP would have one "Icon" view with options to enable/disable the display of metadata and thumbnails (this is essentially how OS X's Icon view works). This would reduce XP's total number of views from six to four without sacrificing any existing functionality.

One could attribute OS X's less capable file browsing to the fact that Apple offers dedicated applications for working with media files in its iLife suite. Thus, the need for Mac users to work with these types of files directly in the filesystem is lessened. However, iLife is not a part of OS X.

Mac OS X: 5
Windows XP: 9

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