Another Windows 8 tidbit: File management to get an overhaul

Bit by bit, the Windows 8 engineering team is revealing some of the under-the-covers changes coming with the next release of Windows.

In the latest (August 23) posting to the "Building Windows 8" blog, Program Management Director Alex Simons shared more about what Microsoft has been doing to tweak the copying/moving/renaming and deleting of files in Windows.

(And if you think this is a "who cares" kind of thing, at 8:30 a.m. ET on August 24, there were nearly 150 comments on this post, the vast majority of which are from people with real ideas and opinions on the topic. With Windows, there is no feature too insignificant to merit lots and lots and lots of heated feedback.)

The core file-management commands in Windows 8 that handle so-called "copy jobs" are going to be optimized for high-volume, concurrent simultaneous use, according to the new blog post.

Currently, fewer than .45 percent of Windows 7 PC users (a number brought to you by the infamous telemetry gathering done by the Windows team) are using third-party tools optimized for these kinds of jobs. While Microsoft still sees a place for third-party copy-job add-ons, Simons maintained, the Windows team is going to be adding to Windows 8 new functionality to the Windows Explorer to handle high-volume copy jobs.

"Our focus is on improving the experience of the person who is doing high-volume copying with Explorer today, who would like more control, more insight into what’s going on while copying, and a cleaner, more streamlined experience," he said.

The post includes a new video of how Windows 8 will tackle file-copying tasks, as well as lots more granular details about the coming copying experience (including new dialog-box options for resolving conflicting file names, etc.).

As a number of commentators on the five "Building Windows 8" posts that have been published in the past week are quick to note, Microsoft still hasn't shared information on many key topics of interest about its coming Windows release (especially around the development-tool story beyond HTML5/JavaScript). Microsoft officials are not expected to talk about this information until mid-September at the Build conference.

Today, by the way, is the 16th anniversary of the launch of Windows 95, for all you granular-tidbit-loving Windows watchers.... And it's also the 10th anniversary of the release to manufacturing of Windows XP, as my ZDNet colleague Zack Whittaker notes.