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Opening Recent Files

Overview

Both Mac OS X and Windows XP provide access to recent applications and documents from a system-wide location - via the Apple menu on OS X and the Start menu on XP. In addition, applications on both operating systems provide quick access to recently-opened items under the File menu.

Mac OS X

OS X has a system-wide "Recent Items" submenu under the Apple menu, which lists the 10 most recently used applications, documents, and servers. Icons are shown for all items to speed identification. You can set the number of items listed here in the Appearance pane of System Preferences - either five, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 50 items for each category. You can clear the menu at any time via a conveniently-placed "Clear Menu" command at the bottom of the menu itself.

Apple has also provided a simple method for Cocoa developers to include an "Open Recent" menu in their applications. While this does not guarantee that application developers will take advantage of this feature (for example, Microsoft Office for the Mac has a custom-built "Open Recent" feature), it does make it more likely that developers will add it to their applications since they won't need to code it themselves. In addition, it provides consistency between the applications that do make use of it.

Most of the applications supplied with OS X that we tested used this feature, such as Script Editor, QuickTime Player, Preview, and iMovie (applications that lacked the feature usually did so for good reason: for example, Safari aptly has a History menu rather than an Open Recent command). A "Clear Menu" command just like the one in the Apple menu's "Open Recent" menu is also built in.

Below is an example of an application (TextEdit) using OS X's standard Open Recent menu. This implementation has a number of niceties:

  • "Open Recent" is a submenu under the file menu, so files listed here will not clutter the main File menu
  • Icons are displayed in the menu to speed identification of items
  • Paths are displayed only when they are required to differentiate between multiple files with the same name
  • When paths are used, the end of the path is displayed, since this will almost always be what differentiates two identically-named files

open-recent-textedit.png
TextEdit's Open Recent Menu

Windows XP

Windows XP has a system-wide "My Recent Documents" submenu under the Start menu, which lists only recently-opened documents and is limited to 15 items. Clearing the menu is a rather lengthy process:

  1. Right-click on the taskbar
  2. Click on "Properties"
  3. Click on the "Start Menu" tab at the top of the window
  4. Click the "Customize" button
  5. Click the "Clear" button

However, items in "My Recent Documents" can be individually removed through a "Delete" item in their contextual menus, so you can remove particular items from the list without clearing it entirely.

Recently-used applications and their icons are displayed on the left-hand side of the Start menu in between "pinned" applications and the All Programs menu; you can set the size of the icons (small or large), as well as the number of applications shown (anywhere from one to 30).

XP's Open/Save dialogs also have a "My Recent Documents" button, which displays the contents of your Recent folder (but shows only those files that the current application can open). Application developers who want to have recent items displayed in the File menu need to add that functionality into applications themselves.

Since Windows XP does not include a built-in "Open Recent" menu for developers to use, the implementation of such menus varies greatly, even amongst Microsoft's own products:

open-recent-xp.gif

In the first example, Microsoft Word shows the drive letter, some of the path, and some of the file name. When the path would have helped to differentiate #2 and #3, Word did not display it.

In the second example, PowerPoint neglects to display the drive letters of the recent files - the reason why is unclear.

In the third example, Microsoft Word displayed the beginnings of paths. Notice how showing just the beginning does not help differentiate the two files (one is on the Desktop, while the other is in the "My Documents" folder).

Conclusion

Mac OS X groups all recently-used applications, documents, and servers under one system-wide menu. Windows XP lists recently-used applications separately from documents, and does not list any recently-accessed servers. OS X's "Clear Menu" command is built directly into the menu, while XP's is arguably much less discoverable and more inconvenient, although XP lets the user remove individual items from the menu.

The implementation of OS X's standard "Open Recent" menu has a number of nice features that aid usability, such as the way in which it displays paths. XP's lack of a built-in way for developers to add "Open Recent" menus to their applications leads to unsatisfactory and inconsistent results. Even though Microsoft Word and PowerPoint are not part of the operating system, and therefore fall out of our site scope, they are a testament to the fact that "Open Recent" menus in XP are filled with inconsistencies. If Microsoft isn't even able to make their own applications consistent with each other in this regard, what example are developers implementing this feature in their own applications supposed to follow?

Mac OS X: 9
Windows XP: 6

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