Vista - What happened to Virtual folders?

I'm using Vista ultimate and was wondering where virtual folders went? Did
it get dropped in the final?

No. Virtual Folders are still there. In Windows XP, the most often used "Virtual Folder" was "My Documents".

In Vista, the "Documents", "Pictures" and "Music" icons are all virtual folders, as are "Contacts", "Desktop", "Favourites", "Links", "Saved Games", "Searches" and "Videos".

With the enhanced media capabilities of Vista, it odd that the "Videos" icon does no appear on the start menu or as a filter option in searches. Maybe that will be fixed in SP1?

Hello,

If you are referring to search folders, they are still there too. The most
obvious one is "Recently Changed" under favorite links on the left in the
save as dialog box.

To make a search folder:

- Click start
- click search
- Specify the parameters of the search and then run the search
- In the blue-green toolbar, you have the option to Save Search. This will
create a search folder.


--
- JB
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User


"Black Baptist" <pray@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47491166$0$5301$9a566e8b@xxxxxx

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:01:42 -0600, dzomlija
<dzomlija.30lk3d@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net> wrote:
OK, I'll bite. What's the difference between Virtual Folders and REAL
Folders?

Hi, Paul.

Virtual Folders don't actually hold any files. They just hold pointers to
the files in the Real Folders.

For example, you might have a photo in a file named Baby.jpg in a folder
called Photos on Drive D:. The actual pathname would be D:\Photos\Baby.jpg.
But if Vista recognizes that as a picture file, it might also put an entry
in C:\Users\Paul\Pictures. It wouldn't actually make a second copy of
Baby.jpg and put it on Drive C:; it would just put an entry in your Pictures
folder pointing to the picture on Drive D:. In this example, D:\Photos is
the real folder; Pictures is the virtual folder.

I'm no expert on Virtual Folders, but this is my simplified understanding of
the way it works.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"Paul Knudsen" <pknudsen@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:bq4kk3t38ufai57upr72da4baqk4e81p0e@xxxxxx

While I have no desire to confuse the issue, that's not entirely accurate, R.C.

Virtual Folders are in their simplest form, are nothing more than shortcuts to any given folder, although even calling them a shortcut isn't fully describing what they are.

In the case of the "Pictures" Virtual Folder, it's default location is indeed "C:\Users\<UserName>\Pictures". If there are photos in "D:\Photos", they will only show up in the Pictures virtual folder if its location has been changed to "D:\Photos".

One of the advantages of a virtual folder is to help the system help you keep your stuff organized. For example, I've redirected my own "Pictures" to point to "E:\Pictures", as opposed to the default of "C:\Users\Peter Dzomlija\Pictures". If I right-click a picture in Internet Explorer and choose save as, the Save dialog is automatically opened to "E:\Pictures" so that a picture can be saved there. I can choose to save the image elsewhere if I want, but thats wher it opens. Basically, virtual folders provides for a pointer to common locations for folders.

It is, of course, entirely up to the application developer whether they want to make use of this facility instead of maintaining their own list of common file locations.

Hi, Peter.

Thanks for the correction and clarification.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"dzomlija" <dzomlija.30n5q7@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net> wrote in message
news:dzomlija.30n5q7@xxxxxx-mx.forums.net...

Thank you I found an app called HardlinkShellExt.exe that does what I'm
looking for.
"R. C. White" <rc@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1913FF13-C729-4071-AB8C-B679CC9CC524@xxxxxx

Interesting. Thanks for the reply.


On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:56:37 -0600, "R. C. White" <rc@xxxxxx>
wrote: