Working with Libraries in Windows 7
August 25, 2009 at 09:08:02 AM, by Gilberto J. Perera
The first time you open Windows Explorer in Windows 7 you will notice that there is a series of links located in the navigation pane that refer to Libraries. You might be wondering what Libraries Microsoft is talking about.
In Windows Vista Microsoft introduced the concept of saving searches as “virtual” folders, for example you could create a search that would reference in an instant all of the PDF files in your computer. Users could create several searches (virtual directories) that would reference these files, great concept, but not entirely useful. In Windows 7 Microsoft has introduced the concept of a Library, which is essentially the same thing, except the search includes files you specify. It’s almost like tagging files and folders to belong to a specific Library, whenever you access the chosen Library the files assigned to that library, regardless of location will appear.
Perhaps the illustration below can elaborate.
As you can see from the illustration above pictures will appear in the Picture Library regardless of their location. They can be physically stored in the kid’s computer, the Halloween folder, the home server, and an external drive, all that matters is that they have been dropped into the Picture Library so that they are displayed when the chosen library is opened.
The My Pictures, My Documents, etc, folders are still available, don’t worry they have not been replaced instead Microsoft just added 4 default libraries to work with;
- Documents
- Music
- Pictures
- Videos
As with other Microsoft products you have the option to completely ignore the Library concept if you don’t like it or you can customize it to your fancy. Users can delete, rename, and further customize each of the libraries provided. Users can also create their custom libraries to collect whichever files they would like to reference.
Although somewhat confusing for some users, if understood the Library feature is a great way to organize specific files located in various locations without having to go crazy hunting down files or worrying about their location, simply add the location to the library and any files added to the original location will appear in the specified library.
What do you think about the Libraries feature? Is it useful or another feature Microsoft could have done without?
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Comments
Kayzu Li at 18:01, August 26, 2009
do you mean it's a copy of the Mac os X smart folders ?