I wish Windows Save/Open dialogues would have links to already open Explorer windows (much like the links to Documents.)
Rationale: Project are often contained in a single root folder. I often start by opening this folder in Explorer. Some programs can be started by double clicking files. Others cannot. Saving new files always requires interacting with the save dialog and thus browsing to the project folder again.
I'm reminded of the Acorn Archimedes: instead of a save dialog, saving produced a tiny "explorer" window containing the file, which you were expected to drag-and-drop to its save location.
RiscOS had some other interesting features, such as all menus being context menus. RoxOS was a short-lived experiment in bringing some RiscOS concepts to Linux, including AppDirs, only having context menus, and even the drag-to-save functionality.
You can copy directory path from explorer, paste it into open/save dialog and it'll navigate there. But your suggestion is much easier and intuitive to use.
Actually Explorer and open/save dialogs have some kind of recently used (or most used) directories. But they always contain some junk for me. Listing currently opened directories there could help without need to rework UI.
MacBook touchpad right under the keyboard makes drag n drop feel like a superior method.
For context, I have a fairly extensive AutoHotKey script and a 22 button Razer Naga configured to automate repetitive tasks on my Windows 10 work PC, and Windows 10 has proven itself to be super stable and robust at work and home, so I’m by no means a bias MacOS fan or whatever, and if I’m honest I really do prefer Windows 10... and my 2013 MBPr died the other day, and there’s not much chance of me buying another MacBook any time soon because they’re over priced and lack ports.
Where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, there’s some things MacOS does that are great UI design....
I second your rationale because I always do that like you.
And the good news is that, you can achieve that with Listary. I'm using an old version of it due to few years ago I found that new versions do perform as fast as the old ones.
I like the idea and wrote a longer comment. But I must object to your two universal statements as they are without further qualification I find them false.
It is possible to start any program via a file association even if it does nothing with the file that the action was activated on.
Saving a new file only requires the file chooser if the application was started first. If the file is created in Explorer via the New ... Templates and then opened the use of the file chooser can be avoided.
It's too bad Templates got flooded with junk back in the Windows 95 days and so people stopped using and Developers stopped creating Templates. OS/2's heartier version of Templates, I recall being extremely useful. Windows' Templates seem derelict and forgotten ruins of the ancients in Windows today.
Isn't a template just an empty document/file/archive stored in a specific folder somewhere? That doesn't require and special technical knowledge or anything, just save an empty file there.
I have a dozen or so software shortcuts (notepad++, cmd, etc) in the SendTo folder, which works similarly.
The issue is that it is a small tragedy of the commons. The more apps put templates in the Templates folder the longer that context menu gets and the harder it is use. Context menus have never been a great place for lists of options that might grow unbounded over time. In the early years of Windows 9x you could directly watch that: almost every application installed a Template because it was a new thing to do and Windows encouraged it, then users started complaining they had too many items in that menu and it was too slow and they stopped using it (or never bothered learning it in the first place), then all of the applications stopped installing templates.
(The SendTo folder had a similar wave of too many then too few applications installing to it. I feel like every application that really made sense on the context menu seem to have moved to direct context menu entries in the main context menu rather than SendTo.)
This feature is actually implemented in OS/2, which was a Microsoft project at one point. It came so close to reaching windows, and would have made the system common dialogs far more powerful.
Rationale: Project are often contained in a single root folder. I often start by opening this folder in Explorer. Some programs can be started by double clicking files. Others cannot. Saving new files always requires interacting with the save dialog and thus browsing to the project folder again.