Ars@PDC: Windows 7 Libraries under the microscope

After using the PDC Windows 7 build for a few days now, one feature I have already grown to appreciate is Libraries. The Libraries provide a view of the filesystem that is tailored to specific content types. By default, Libraries are created for communications, contacts, documents, downloads, music, pictures, and video. Each Library presents its content in a style that's most appropriate; the downloads Library, for example, lists the URL that each downloaded files came from (or at least it will; currently the column doesn't get populated correctly), the contacts Library shows e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and so on.

Windows 7 Screenshots
Libraries

These special folders (and their special views) will already be familiar to users of Vista. Where Libraries differ is that they're not individual folders. Rather, each Library is an aggregate of many different folders. By default, these will typically be each user's content-specific folder (Pictures, say) merged with the Public content folder that Vista introduced. You can add to these as you see fit; I'm going to add my media shares on my home fileserver, as well as my removable hard disk full of music.

This is all quite convenient, but views of the filesystem aren't new; we can get a similar thing with saved searches. What we can't do with saved searches is write to them. With Libraries, we can. Each Library has a location specified as the save location. Any file saved to the Library is stored in the specified place.

Library configuration

For me, this is making Libraries a whole lot more useful than mere search folders, because it lets me have one way of filing that works as well for creating files as it does opening them.

It's possible to create custom Libraries made up of arbitrary locations; the demos at PDC showed Libraries being used to group together all the files related to a given project or customer, for example. They're useful whenever an aggregated view of multiple locations is required.

The Libraries are also used throughout Windows 7. Prior to 7, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center both had their own distinct library concept. In Windows 7, however, both of these programs use the Libraries visible in Explorer. This results in a far more consistent view of the media stored on the PC.

There are a few niggles with Libraries as they currently stand, however. The Communications Library has no default locations associated. What's more, there are no viable locations to use. Although the Mail application in Vista stored its mails in individual files (instead of the .dbx files that Outlook Express used to use), Windows Live Mail appears to use a hybrid of files in the filesystem and a database. This means it's not amenable to display using the Library feature.

A similar problem strikes the Contacts folder; though it does incorporate the Vista-style contacts folder, applications like Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, and Outlook don't actually store any contact data in there, rendering both folder and Library rather redundant.

These gripes aside, Libraries are a very welcome addition to Windows file management. I've already come to depend on them, and feel their absence from Vista whenever I use it. Even at this early stage, features like this show that Windows 7 is really shaping up to be a must-have release.