Keywords - are they still in Vista??

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Keywords are still around - they're available as part of the "saving
dialogs" which are universal around Vista. You can add keywords or tags as
their commonly known as, so that the Indexer can index them better and you
can search for them easier.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
No they aren't. Not in Beta 2 at least. The Office 2007 dialogs have some
metadata fields but none of the common dialogs for apps like Notepad or
Paint do. And there don't appear to be any global tag or keyword fields for
all files anymore, just whatever metadata a particular file format may have.

The link the OP posted has some outdated info and that 2nd screenshot is old
too.

Vista's metadata capabilities seem to have been neutered more than I had
first realized :(
 
I'm referring to global tag or keyword fields and also the ability to ****
star files which you rate.
If this isn't in the beta thats bad news...
 
Tags and Ratings are there for some files. There is a tags field for Office
Documents, and JPGs, but not for PNGs, text files or MP3s. There is a
ratings field for MP3s and JPGs but not for text files, PNGs, or Office
Documents. It appears to be limited to the file formats that support the
fields or possibly to the search handlers that read and write the metadata
to/from the files. It sounds like we'll be at the mercy of MS and 3rd
parties for support of these fields.

As an added bonus, you can tag a PNG or a JPG in Windows Photo Gallery, but
only the JPGs tag is visible/searchable from the shell.
 
Oh - ratings are still there so you can select almost any file and rate it -
simply select the "Choose details" option by right clicking on the details
bar at the top of the window to select it.

Also - the tags must still be in there. All the Office 2007 Beta 1/2
applications have the tags available there, and also they're able to been
seen in the "Choose details" option - so they've either removed it and
remnents are still there, or they've backpeddled a bit :os

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
Zack Whittaker said:
Oh - ratings are still there so you can select almost any file and rate
it - simply select the "Choose details" option by right clicking on the
details bar at the top of the window to select it.
Click to expand...
The what at the top of where? These things do not appear to exist in my copy
of Vista Beta 2.
Also - the tags must still be in there. All the Office 2007 Beta 1/2
applications have the tags available there, and also they're able to been
seen in the "Choose details" option - so they've either removed it and
remnents are still there, or they've backpeddled a bit :os
Click to expand...

Like I said, some file formats (or their metadata handlers) support tags or
ratings, some don't.
 
that sort of makes sense I guess

Chris Altmann said:
Tags and Ratings are there for some files. There is a tags field for Office
Documents, and JPGs, but not for PNGs, text files or MP3s. There is a
ratings field for MP3s and JPGs but not for text files, PNGs, or Office
Documents. It appears to be limited to the file formats that support the
fields or possibly to the search handlers that read and write the metadata
to/from the files. It sounds like we'll be at the mercy of MS and 3rd
parties for support of these fields.

As an added bonus, you can tag a PNG or a JPG in Windows Photo Gallery, but
only the JPGs tag is visible/searchable from the shell.
Click to expand...
 
You could argue that's a restrictive practice. though I admit I'm not sure if
its technically possible to do 3rd parties without altering their files
 
New way of editing file properties is absolutely annoying (having to click
"edit") - I would love MS to go back to direct editing of properties in
Preview Pane, as it was in older builds of Vista. Vista was supposed to
encourage users to add metadata to their files, and almost all of this stuff
is gone/hidden/made second class citizen. What a shame.
 
I was hoping that certain metadata like keywords or tags would be stored
directly in Vista's search index, even for files that cannot keep their own
metadata (like plain text files). If a file format did support such
metadata, it would also get updated.

I'll admit I didn't investigate this with the last build I had access to
(5308), because the search function itself appeared to be broken in that
build. I might have noticed it then too, and not expected so much from this
build.
 
Agreed. Just filed a bug on that one.

Ji?? Fiala said:
New way of editing file properties is absolutely annoying (having to click
"edit") - I would love MS to go back to direct editing of properties in
Preview Pane, as it was in older builds of Vista. Vista was supposed to
encourage users to add metadata to their files, and almost all of this
stuff is gone/hidden/made second class citizen. What a shame.
Click to expand...
 
Currently the only way I can think of supporting metadata on files like
plain text files is to write a property handler and register it for plain
text files that then stores the metadata in an alternate NTFS stream.

However Microsoft actively discourages the use of alternate NTFS streams for
storing metadata since it's very easy for the alternate stream to disappear
and therefore lose the metadata, e.g. when copying the file to a FAT
filesysytem, emailing the file, zipping the file, writing to CD etc.

The only time the alternate stream is maitained really is when copying to
another NTFS disk, or using Windows Backup.

I was planning on doing some test development with property handlers so
maybe I'll knock one up that can be used to add metadata to any required
file by using an NTFS alternate stream. If there is any interest I'll make
it available for testing.

Cheers
 
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