Windows 7: why two "open/save" dialogs?

i've seen 2 open/save dialog boxes in Windows 7:



the first one is very useful. the second one is not.

why are there two? can i make the second one go away? it reminds me of XP, and it makes my head ache

I think theres more than two. It depends on the version of windows it was compiled on/for and the compiler would've built in the dialogs for that version. Ive seen some even older ones for Windows 9x. Really Windows should override the dialogs for the latest version imo.

i can't imagine they're all built into apps, they must be part of windows. i launched both of those from firefox. the first one with CTRL-O, and the second while adding an attachment in gmail.

going though the apps pinned to my start menu...

Photoshop CS4: old
Office 2007: new
Notepad2: new
MP3tag: new

The dialog(s) is part of the OS, but It's up to the programs to decide which dialog style/combo to pull up.

ok, but why two styles? why would there be more than one, and why would an app pull up the outdated one intentionally? it always throw me when i go to save something and my favorites are not there...

If the app is coded for older OS that doesn't have the newest dialog, the new wouldn't work, thus it's safer to use older because they exist in newer windows'.

I'm not that familiar with coding but sure you can detect OS and that way decide which dialog pops up, assuming he coded it with vista/7 in mind along with xp and/or older OS.

It's not really about one being outdated and another not. The open dialog is a moduled based ui in windows.

For example, older office programs had their own dialogs that didn't use the "default" common places on the side. (on XP)

Programmer preference on how they think you might want to get to your files.

i understand. but i still think it's bizarre that the old XP style dialog still exists in Windows 7, and that apps like Photoshop CS4 use it instead of the newer and more functional design...

It's also possible there's a "default" settings that will pull the new one, and programs that don't specify a different dialog just go to the new one.

The top one is the "shell" file dialog and is "part of the OS" as it ships. Programs can call it if they want but they have no real control over it.

The second one is the "MFC" dialog which most programs use. It's part of the programming API, not the OS and it gets installed with the VC runtime libs. There are several permutations of it too, if you have enough software installed you may see 3-4 slightly different ones. But also, that dialog can be "extended" with custom controls so you may see even more permutations of that one over time.

So program written for the MFC one will remain in that frozen state as long as they live, while programs wrtten to launch the shell one will have the dialog change on them from S to OS and possibly the API as well.

For that reason and just general backwards compatibility it isn't really possible to just override the "old" one with the new one.

The main problem is that the system one has evolved faster than the MFC API one so the disparity is considerable at this point :/