The idea that users will accidentally (and irreparably) do the wrong thing with this seems a little far-fetched when I try to imagine just how they’d go about executing such an accident.Ĭan this UI be improved tremendously through better layout and information design, or even a few new functional elements? Absolutely. None of the dozens of settings are triggered unless you actually touch it, and the whole process doesn’t happen until you want it too.
Are you really imagining yourself using such a tool, confronting a folder with a thousand files whose names need to be idiosyncratically changed? Most of you seem to be falling back on perfectly reliable and wise design principles (such as the portmanteau principle), making general heuristic critiques without (IMHO) considering the unique niche (both niche users and niche use cases) this product is designed for.įor example, I cannot imagine the specific cataclysmic user error Sleight imagines might occur with this UI (especially since it does have both preview and revert features). Just as an exercise, however, I wonder how many of you have actually had to use tools like this before. I think I fixed it, but I am just waiting to get hit again Good points all around. Is that the nut of Gruber’s critique? Or is he being a little hasty in his judgement here? Categories Business, Design, Information Architecture, Information Design, Interface Design, Reviews, Technology, User Experience Design Post Grinter: THANK YOU! I was wondering what the hell was going on with my search traffic. My only substantive critique, in fact, would be aesthetic: the grid of the page and the layout of the form elements could be more pleasing and better organized from an information design perspective. What’s more, showing all the possible transformations on this one screen educates the user on what the application can actually do: No poking around through menus and manuals to find out what this app is capable of. The entire transformation is right there for the user to see, no surprises. The fields are numbered, too, which seems to suggest the order the transformations are processed. There are no layers of dialog boxes, no multistep wizards. The signature quality of this design is that every single feature is shown on one page. So if it’s not the number of features that’s bad, let’s focus on the UI itself. This tool is intended for people without ninja-like mastery of the black art of regex construction (and, for that matter, for office production workers who may not know how to program anything at all, for example a photo editor). Even the wacky features like renumbering the files using roman numerals doesn’t seem absurd to me. Fewer features make this tool less likely to serve its core function: saving your ass during a freak once-in-a-lifetime file renaming emergency. This is one of those tools where, at a fundamental level, more features is better than less. I’ve had to do some absurdly massive batch file renaming (hundreds or even thousands of files) about twenty times in my life, and every single time it’s been a unique and bizarre challenge. And yes, it certainly looks terrible, like a stereotypical case study in haphazard, bloated, bad UI design.īut is the UI design really that bad? I’m not so sure.Īs someone who has had to do all manner of complex and esoteric batch file renaming over my career, this tool looks pretty darn powerful to me. For that, you would use the following syntax: rename-item " current_filename.ext" "new_filename.John Gruber invites public ridicule to the UI design of this file renaming application.
RELATED: 9 Ways to Open PowerShell in Windows 10įirst, let’s look at renaming a single file.
Once there, click File > Open Windows PowerShell, and then click “Open Windows PowerShell.” The quickest way to open a PowerShell window at your desired location is to first open the folder in File Explorer. While we’ll only scratch the surface of naming your files, you can do some really powerful things, including piping cmdlets together to batch replace characters in a filename. Windows PowerShell is even more powerful and flexible than Command Prompt when it comes to renaming files and folders in a command-line environment. For example, to rename the file “Home Movies.ogv” to “First Birthday.ogv” you would use the following command: ren "Home Movie.ogv" "First Birthday.ogv" Although the quotes aren’t mandatory, they’re required if either of the current or new names has a space in them.
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