If you installed any build of Windows Vista prior to RC1, you may have noticed a slight omission from the set of modes you could select for your folder views. Sure, we introduced cool new live icons that show you previews of the actual file contents and can be scaled all the way from 16x16 to 256x256 pixels, but where did List mode go? For those of you who don't remember List mode, it's the view mode we had in Windows XP that scrolls horizontally and has all your items arranged in columns with 16x16 icons, like this:
A D G
B E H
C F I
The columns are the key point of this view mode; they are sorted top to bottom, making it really easy to scan the list, just like reading down the names in a phone book. So if it's so easy to use and so cool, why did it go missing in every build of Windows Vista until RC1?
There are a lot of reason we removed List mode. First off, our usability research told us that most people dislike horizontal scrollbars. List mode requires a horizontal scrollbar to enable the sorted columns to scroll off to the side. Second, List mode doesn't support the enhanced grouping feature that we added as a key component of Windows Vista's search and organization improvements. The same sorted columns that make the items easy to read also make it very hard to present items in logical groups.
Since every other view mode in Windows Vista scrolls vertically, we can draw the group header across the entire view, making it easy to visually identify which items belong to which group. In List mode, however, group headers would have to be in line with the columns, and since columns wrap back to the top you can have items that aren't directly under a header. We found that this was really confusing. We could never tell what group an item belonged to, especially when it belonged to multiple groups and was highlighted in the middle of several columns at once (this can happen if you group by Tags and an item has multiple tags.) We experimented with a lot of different ways to show the groups while maintaining the columns, but none of them could maintain column continuity while not wasting a lot of visual space. For example, we tried putting the headers at the top, over a set of columns and forcing each group to start a new column, but that looked really funny when there was only one item in the group!
On top of all of that, when we made every file display a scalable thumbnail, it made sense to just show the small, 16x16 icons in our standard Icon view. (This setting is called Small Icons in the Views menu.) In Small Icons, there's no horizontal scrollbar, because the items are sorted in rows, like this:
A B C
D E F
G H I
This seemed like a great solution; it got rid of the horizontal scrollbar and it enabled grouping by rows, which looks pretty good even when there's only one item in a group. So we released Beta 1 with what we thought was a solid update to our view modes.
Within days of releasing the first public beta of Windows Vista, we had a handful of questions from the beta community asking how to get to List mode. Over the course of several CTP releases and all the way up through Beta 2, we received literally hundreds of emails, newsgroup posts, blog entries, and articles asking us, pleading with us to put List back. The feedback was clear: a LOT of people found Small Icons much harder to read because you can't follow down the column. Instead, you have to look across the row, go down a line, across again, etc. This is great for pictures and large thumbnails because you're looking at the image, but it just wasn't cutting it for finding a filename.
Within weeks of Beta 1's release, we were making plans to put List mode back into Windows Vista. We heard the feedback loud and clear, and there was no doubt that we'd bring it back. Unfortunately, there just wasn't time to squeeze it into our Beta 2 release schedule, so we had to push it out to RC1. If you've installed RC1, you'll happily notice List mode is back in action, where it belongs. You might notice that it doesn't support the enhanced grouping capabilities found in the other view modes. As explained above, grouping just doesn't fit into List mode very well, but we weren't going to let that stop us from bringing back the columns that everyone wanted. In the end, we simply want to make it easier for you to find your files, and if List mode is what you need to do it, then we'll make sure it's available.