Windows 7 Feature Focus: Libraries
Windows 7 Feature Focus: Libraries
Posted 07/28/2009 at 10:30am
| by Mark Edward Soper
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Previous versions of Windows have included separate folders for documents, music, videos, and photos (such as Windows XP's My Documents, My Pictures, My Videos, and My Music folders). These folders made it convenient to organize and open different types of files - as long as they were stored in the appropriate folder. However, with the increasing popularity of using network shares and external hard disks for media storage, Windows users have faced challenges in file management.
Although shortcuts to additional media locations, symbolic links to other locations (introduced in Windows Vista), and changing the default location used by a user's media files have all been used to cope with the problem, the results for Windows users have been:
- A lot of clicking to find media files
- No easy way to see all of the media files of a particular type in different locations at the same time
Enter the "new" Windows 7 libraries feature. Although earlier versions of Windows Media Center have included a libraries function to make media access easier, it worked only within the WMC interface. Windows 7 is the first Windows version to bring libraries to the Windows Explorer.
What Is a Library?
A library is a logical folder that can display the contents of multiple physical locations at the same time: in other words, as if the contents were stored in the same physical folder. When you open Documents, Pictures, Music, or Videos shortcuts from the Windows 7 Start menu, you are opening the current user's Documents, Pictures, Music, or Videos libraries. Here's a portion of the Documents library on one of my Windows 7 systems:
At first glance, it looks about the same as the Windows Vista Documents folder. However, note that under the Documents library title that there are two locations in this library. That's two folders visible at the same time.
Accessing Your Personal Folders
If you prefer to view only the contents of your personal folders, open the Start menu and click your name. The folders in the main pane are your personal folders:
Default Library Locations
To find out which folders are included in a library, open the library and click the locations link, or hover your mouse over the locations link. For example, if you have the Documents library open, the link opens the Documents Library Locations dialog:
By default, Windows 7 uses the following locations for each user's libraries (assuming C:\drive is used as the system drive):
Documents library:
C:\Users\username\Documents* (My Documents)
C:\Users\Public\Documents (Public Documents)
Music library:
C:\Users\username\Music* (My Music)
C:\Users\Public\Music (Public Music)
Pictures library:
C:\Users\username\Pictures* (My Pictures)
C:\Users\Public\Pictures (Public Pictures)
Videos library:
C:\Users\username\Videos* (My Videos)
C:\Users\Public\Videos (Public Videos)
*The default save location - if you don't specify a different location, saving a new or edited file to the library will save the file to this location.
By placing the Public folders in each library by default, Windows 7 makes it easy to for users to see the files they're sharing with other users. By default, Windows 7 libraries use the By Folder view, which enables you to see at a glance the files in each shared folder. In this example, the Videos library includes four locations, and you can see some of the contents of two of the locations:
To view all of the folders in a library, you can also expand the library in the left pane of Windows Explorer:
Because libraries are displayed in the left pane of an Explorer window, you can access them the same way you'd access personal folders, local drives, mapped drives, and network folders.
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hath80
January 10, 2012 at 12:52am
Windows 7 is the first Windows version to bring libraries to the Windows Explorer. With the right tool, you can easily burn mp4 to dvd and itunes to dvd. mp4 to dvd
faxedhead
November 06, 2009 at 1:24am
The symbolic link trick is a clever (but painful) work-around, but there are a couple of draw-backs
with it. I have written a tool to do the job properly - and it provides
some additional features like backup/restore of library sets. You can
download it for free (+ WPF source) here:
UpsideDownPants
August 04, 2009 at 4:50pm
Here, allow me to make an ass of myself by sh*t-talking something I haven't yet tried and don't know too much about(since I didn't even bother to read the whole article). I am quite gifted at confusing idiotic ramblings with an informed opinion!
Oh wait, I see some of you have already taken care of this for me. Never mind, carry on.
DarkHelmet
July 28, 2009 at 8:31pm
I have been wrestling with this also because I have a server in my house, and all my photos and music are there. Also, it's convenient because it gives me one point of backup. So, naturally I want the Photos and Music libraries in Windows 7 to include that network location. One problem. I have about 25GB of photos, and my iTunes library is about 65GB. So OfflineFiles is a little unwieldy. It makes the computers take FOREVER to login, because Windows syncs those files on login. Now, since one of my computers is a laptop, I actually *LIKE* having an offline cache of my photos and music, even though some would consider that a waste of hard drive space. At the moment I'm playing around with LiveMesh to sync between the PCs and so far it seems to work well, without the login delay. I recommend trying it. You can use it to keep local folders in sync between PCs, without the need for the funky Symbolic Links to add them to a library, because... well, they're local. One tip on this: LiveMesh will also sync online, but they only give you 5GB of space. So if you want to sync more then that, you can tell the LiveMesh client to not sync to the online space, and then you will have unlimited capacity for syncing peer to peer. https://www.mesh.com
-Helmet
ghot
July 28, 2009 at 7:55pm
Here again we have more MS bottomline BS... why use a shortcut and keep track of where you put things....let Windows do it for you for ONLY $350. Same BS different day....take something that works flawlessy, make it un-neededly complex and then charge money for it. Sure, I guess if you happen to be an idiot...maybe libraries will be a good thing.
I know I only SEEM to accuse MS of this, but in fact most software devs do this...take Norton Ghost....Symantec takes a very simple to use product aka NG 2003 adds so many un needed kitchen sink options...that the product becomes....usless. At least they have seen the light when it comes to their latest AV product.
I don't dilike MS...rather I love Windows..that is WHY I post...hoping that sooner or later MS will read one of these...and get their act together.
Silly me..I just make a folder called Music...and guess what....I put all my Music there. As for sharing, didn't we learn in the 60's what TOO much sharing can bring...guess not!
LOL...explaining how MS has improved on the simple "make a music folder concept" takes ONLY 4 pages...LOL
Take an OS, and edit out all the efficiency, and what you have left is a post-XP Microsoft operating system :)
dracx619
July 29, 2009 at 7:34am
a general userbase will love libraries because they are usually messier and more disorganized with their file structureing. libraries will allow the to palce their approriate files in these libraries and have all their files in one place as opposed to uing shortcuts everywhere or actually taking the time to create a structured, clean file system.
i am extemely organized with my files and it libraries isnt exactly a must for me, but it will come in handy once i build my bome media network and have to share media through out the house, (tvs, stereos, computers, laptops, etc)
and c'mon now, at least be fair if your gona go on an attack spree. libraries is a basic function across all win 7 versions and if you were to pay for ultimate, a high price doesn't just get you libraries.
and this guide is 4 pages simply because like many things in life, there is more than one way to do something and they are simply sharing those. i cant tell you how to use libraries in a few sentences but you may not like my way, so ergo, heres 4 pages that talk about various ways to take advantage of them.
killerxx7
July 29, 2009 at 2:13am
sorry buy you sire are a idiot....you cant afford win7 fine stay with xp but dont flame abou thing you will never understand!!!!
Liberies is great for whene you have many hdds(as alot of user have) and need to have a location where u can accses all your files from all you hdds....
now good freind do you home work before spamming shit like that!
arch-chancellor
July 28, 2009 at 5:33pm
I have just been making my own folders where I need them. If I need to access them quickly I put a short cut on the desktop.
DOOMHAMMA
July 28, 2009 at 12:18pm
I am making the hop from XP to W7, and I wish I had this for the entire duration I was using XP. Bah! The guy below me is a hater :p Also, you can have the favorites show which folder each part comes from, at least that is what I have discovered when doing this. Nothing a trip to the trash can won't fix anyway. "Epic" problem solved *rolls eyes*
lien_meat
July 28, 2009 at 7:19pm
unless you already REALLY deleted it...
And hey...I like 7. I just think it's silly this is getting so much press, when this kind of thing been so easy on every other os for years.
### I'm an idiot, and I approve this message ###
lien_meat
July 28, 2009 at 10:51am
I've been doing the same basic thing in linux since I started using it 5 years ago...and all from the gui (gnome's nautilus). Symnlinks are MASSIVELY powerful and productive...sad that you have to drop to the command line to use a feature which any linux user takes for granted. Of course, you could say the same thing about some linux features, but windows is supposed to be user friendly...
Libraries seem harder to manage and set up than just symnlinking respective folders from other sources into a container dirrectory, which accomplishes nearly what libraries do...and if you really wanted the exact same thing, symlinking the remote files from a simple bash script would work just fine.
I also see the possibly of accidentally deleting a file from the wrong source when using libraries. It's not readily apparent where the source of a particular file is per say while using libraries. I can see how one could easily delete a file from his library, thinking it is local, when in fact it wasn't, in turn causing them who knows how much agony.
If you stick with the traditional symlinked dirrectories from remote sources, this problem is MUCH less likely given that you understand the topology of your directory structure you created with the symlinks (which you'd be an idiot not to).
### I'm an idiot, and I approve this message ###
dracx619
July 29, 2009 at 7:21am
its really not that complicated. find out where your random crap is and throw it in the approprate library. a little work in the beginning goes a long way in the future. for a regular hoem user, it really wont get more complicated than what i first said. for a more deamnding user suchc as myself, the only extra step i did was just changemy default locations. and when i open up the pictures library for example, i have a fodler for just pictures on my data drive, and my photography with raw and tiff files on another drive, in that library, it divides those folders by drive and location so i dont know why it would be hard knowing where a file really is.
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