Live Folders - Your opinion?

[msalmank]

Hello everyone!

Many of us are in the process of upgrading to Update 1 for Windows 8.1 (a.k.a GDR1 DP). I imagine that by now most of you have successfully applied the update and have already played around with it. Admittedly one of the most important/major features in this DP is Live Folders.

Although Windows Phone has always offered a different take when it comes to the Start Screen (or the Home Screen), providing us with Live Tiles that give us counters as well as full detailed notifications on the tile itself, I've never pinned many applications on my start screen to avoid creating a large mess (or too long a list to scroll through). Nokia offered us Folders which were useful to some extent but they kind of whipped away the whole appeal of having live tiles to begin with and also didn't work too well (imo) in terms of speed/optimization.

With GDR1, Live Folders gives us the capability to organize our start menu and put tiles into custom folders. Live Folders provides the following:

• Merge multiple tiles into folders.
• Each folder can have a name or can be created without a name.
• The Folder Tile can be set the three sizes that you could set a single tile to - i.e. small, medium, and large.
• The Live Folder Tile automatically rotates through your applications, so if you have a large number of applications in your folder, it goes through all of them. UPDATE: Small folder tiles don't seem to animate and thus don't rotate through the applications/tiles.
• Live Tiles are displayed on the Live Folder Tile. For instance, for the WPCentral application, it displays the notifications, etc. on my live folder tile. Same for News, Emails, and other tiles that offered live updates/notifications. In essence, the Live Folder Tile is a Live Tile hooked into multiple applications.

I've already organized my start screen and put almost everything into folders. I'm loving it so far. How about you? Are you finding Live Folders to be what you expected? Better?

Some screenshots:


Known Issues/Comments:

• The color of the bars will remain grey if you use a Start background, otherwise it will use your Accet color.
• Small folder tile doesn't animate/rotate through apps.
• If a folder doesn't have too many apps, it adds empty grids to the Live Folder Tile. It would look better if the cells didn't have borders around them and the app tiles/icons would take up more space automatically.
• My main dislike, though not significant, is how the Live Folder Tile goes all empty when you click on it and it expands out. Perhaps if it had faded out, or displayed the name of the folder on top of that tile... that would've been a bit nicer (in my opinion). Perhaps something like the quick edit I made below...

UPDATE: For those who have been asking about the Start Screen Background that I use... It is actually the one provided by Sam Sabri on WPCentral in his "What's on your Start Screen?" post. The direct link to the background (from Sam) is: Click Here...

Preview: (Use the link above to download the file in full resolution)


Regards.
Salman Khalid.

 

[Jonnie LasVegas]

I love the live folders! So much better than I expected. Way better than any concepts or other folder apps I've seen.

 

[BaritoneGuy]

I like them. I pinned a few stocks from my watchlist in Bing finance and then placed them in an app folder. Pretty cool the way it cycles through the stocks.

 

[tlgem]

Wish you could shut off animation. I have a few folders and live tiles & all the movement is getting to be a little much.
May be going back to app folder

 

[jharr100]

I like them as well its just the blank tiles when you dont have enough apps bothers me really badly it looks as if there is an empty space

 

[msalmank]

I love the live folders! So much better than I expected. Way better than any concepts or other folder apps I've seen.

My only dislike, if any, is how the Live Folder Tile goes all empty when you click on it and it expands out. Perhaps if it had faded out, or displayed the name of the folder on top of that tile... that would've been a bit nicer (in my opinion).

Edited - Added the image to the first post.

 

[msalmank]

Wish you could shut off animation. I have a few folders and live tiles & all the movement is getting to be a little much.
May be going back to app folder

Honestly I don't find it too much but it might be nice, in the future, to allow us to set animations off on a Live Folder Tile... I wouldn't fall back to app folders personally, as Live Folders are snappier/faster.

 

[msalmank]

I like them as well its just the blank tiles when you dont have enough apps bothers me really badly it looks as if there is an empty space

Lol! I know that feeling. I wanted to size some of the Live Folder Tiles large but ended up going with Medium just because I didn't have that many apps in the folder to fill up the larger tile! :smile:

 

[Nimdock]

Love them!

 

[jharr100]

Lol! I know that feeling. I wanted to size some of the Live Folder Tiles large but ended up going with Medium just because I didn't have that many apps in the folder to fill up the larger tile! :smile:

Yea the only thing that gets me with that is that I can't see the large live tile that way...I think im going to start using the medium size too.

 

[Tomazon]

Loving Live Folders so far. I wasn't expecting this kind of geniality. Excellent execution overall.
The only tiny issue i find is when you touch a Folder that is in the middle o lower part of the screen, it expands not showing all the programs in it. I have to manually scroll down to watch them. But if you close it and open it again, it will show all the live tiles without scrolling. (i'm on a 520)

 

[Aditya142]

love it..still haters will hate and potatoes will potate

 

[anon(5789608)]

I used nokia's app folder and now native folder.

but using excess distorts metro UI

 

[Narciso Neto]

Simply AMAZING!! This is far better than i ever expected...

 

[eepyaich]

Simply AMAZING!! This is far better than i ever expected...

Couldn't have put it better myself! I'd not really worked out how this was going to work from last week's screenshots, but think the execution is great.

 

[CrossIsHere]

I'm loving it.

 

[anon(8171782)]

Guys why you downloaded it? Its beta os, you complain too much, well Microsoft didn't force you to download it,you can always downgrade.

 

[queentut16]

Live folders are really very slick. With room for some minor improvements. The horizontal dividers should be your theme highlight color (or even better yet, transparent), not grey for all. I thought I'd actually seen previous screenshots showing it that way?

Now my next quest is to make a live folder with my most used web pages, with proper icons (not a screenshot of the webpage when pinned). Any suggestions for this? I love the UC browser home screen, but with the updates IE really is now the better browser (with a crappy interface).

 

[Vitor Correia2]

Excellent! I agree that when expanded, the small tile could fade out. I would prefer it to the ideagiven above of the title, because that is already shown at the top line, which is great as it is. Great update! Only thing missing now is live lock screen app to be updated!

 

[cbreze]

Really like it. Huge improvement IMO. My app folder for all my news stuff fits in there nicely as well. I find keeping the tiles within small keeps them from scrolling around which was a tad annoying. Updates show up and I can see them right away since its not scrolling. Really cleans up my start screen as well. It all works for me perfectly.