Ok, this has bugged me for some time now. To reproduce:
- Open Windows explorer.
- Press Alt+D to set focus to the navigation bar.
- Begin typing a (valid) path, i.e., "\Progr".
- Press TAB and "Program Files" is selected as the best match and populated into the nav bar.
- Press Enter (\Program Files is opened in the folder pane).
- Begin typing the name of a folder and it will be selected in the folder pane (i.e., incremental search. In XP you had to TAB three times to get there, Windows 7 places focus there automatically. Very nice).
Now, open a program, let's say, Excel.
- Press Ctrl+O to open the Open File Dialog.
- Press Alt+D to set focus to the nav bar.
- Begin typing a (valid) path, i.e., "\Progr".
- Press TAB and focus is now set to the search text area to the right. The nav bar is reset to its last value.
Why is this? This is terribly annoying and prevents me from quickly navigating to a directory via the keyboard.
Also, if you press the Down arrow key instead of Tab to select the suggested folder path and then press Enter, focus is not set to the folder pane as it is in explorer. If you begin typing to select a directory the nav bar still has focus and you have to press TAB four times to set focus to the folder pane.
This annoys me to no end as I use the keyboard almost exclusively to perform actions in Windows. Does anyone around here have any insight into why this behavior is inconsistent between Explorer and file dialogs in Windows?
Raymond Chen, if you're here, I could sure use your input.