this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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First thing I install on a windows puter is "Everything" app by Voidtools. I don't know how windows users can find anything at all without it. It's a must.
How do you save stuff without knowing where you're saving it? Genuinely curious, as I really don't understand what this meme is referring to. Windows search has also become better over the years, and recently it's been good enough for my uses. "Everything" is still a handy tool though.
Almost all software that I use, ask about the target location and/or filename when you save it. There's also some software with default saving location, but it's usually quite easy to find out from i.e. settings or some other part of the interface.
Also - saving stuff to unknown folders is related to the software not being clear about the target folder, I don't really know why people would blame Windows for the software being unclear. Unless we're talking about something specific to Windows which I'm just not familiar with. :D
As with all MS updates in recent years, they keep making it harder to actually see the folder structure. In Office I have to click like three more times than I used to in order to actually see the ancient folder interface to select the drive and folder I need to save in. I don't understand why they would do this. The new interface would be perfectly fine if it had 1/4 the functionality of the Win95 interface.
I understand a ton of young college grads have literally no idea how file/folder structure works. I've heard horror stories about the engineering new hires.
Once upon a time windows had absolute pathing. When you saved, it went in the directory you were in out where you told it.
Some time ago windows went to path relative to user. So now when you save to 'desktop' it could be one of several desktop folders. Windows tries to hide this by mapping 'desktop' to your user relative desktop, but it does this at the application level rather than in the base O/S. (Or, it does it on extended file system APIs). Some apps handle it, some apps don't. If you have multiple users on a PC, it's a mess.
It gets further complicated by things like OneDrive. My mom was surprised a few weeks ago by how much stuff was being saved to the cloud instead of in a local folder, because Windows doesn't make it particularly obvious when one is in the local Documents, or the OneDrive Documents