Today Microsoft gave everyone a little peek into how SkyDrive will be integrated into Windows 8, which includes a Metro-style app that will allow the quick and easy access to your files on SkyDrive through the app, and also through any other app that contains the ability to open and save files with the file picker in Windows 8.

Not only will there be a Metro-style app available with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (which is expected to be released in a week or so), but there will also be a replacement for the current Windows Live Mesh application for the desktop. This new application will be “very simple” and “highly efficient, according to the blog post, as the installer will be less than 5MB and install under 10 seconds. But more on that later.

As of today, SkyDrive (there is no mention of “Windows Live” in this blog post) has over 17 million active users, storing more than 10PB of data. Microsoft is expecting to have that figure grow beyond some of the largest services that provide similar features, which is a pretty big undertaking. However Mike Torres and Omar Shahine, group program managers for SkyDrive, point out that Microsoft has a lot of experience with handling such large amounts of data as Hotmail stores over 100PB of data. It now appears that it is Microsoft’s goal “to be the world’s hard drive.”

SkyDrive goes Metro

There isn’t much more to say here that I haven’t said already, but according to the post this Metro-style SkyDrive app is built using WinRT with JavaScript, CSS and HTML5, and because of this the app actually uses many of the JSON APIs currently provided by SkyDrive.com. As both the app and SkyDrive.com get updated, soon both will appear as the same thing — however that will occur, we’re not sure.

As stated, any other Metro-style app that take advantage of the charms and contracts within the WinRT API, SkyDrive will be available as a file picker. This means users will be able to open and save files to their SkyDrive with virtually any app, and the app will not have to explicitly support such functionality.

So Long, Windows Live Mesh!

Currently in order to sync files from your desktop to your SkyDrive the computer must be running Windows Live Mesh, which is provided by Windows Live Essentials. While users must still install an application to access SkyDrive on their desktop, it will be a much simpler process, and it will be much more powerful.

When this application is installed, the user will be allowed to choose which folder will be the SkyDrive folder (which will default to %UserProfile%\SkyDrive\), and the folder from there on out will be synced to SkyDrive, and any updates will be automatically synced to the computer.

This may not sound much different, but the current syncing application is completely separate from Windows Explorer, and there are no indications that the folder is out-of-date or that it is even being synced, but this new application will be integrated into Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer will show overlay icons on the files and folders within the synced SkyDrive folder and show when items are up-to-date or being synced.

Finally, many users of Windows Live Mesh complain that they do not get access to the full 25GB of space provided by the SkyDrive service, and also the lack of uploading huge files. This will also change, as the entire 25GB of space will be available when syncing files, and files of up to 2GB may be synced.

Did I mention that this application will be available not only on Windows 8, but also Windows 7 and Vista? Sorry XP users, you’re out of luck!

SkyDrive.com

Soon users of SkyDrive will be able to access any file on their computer through SkyDrive.com — even if the files are not synced from the computer. The users will be able to browse their files remotely, even download them, or stream videos and browse photo albums. There will also be the ability to copy an item to the SkyDrive synced folder, allowing you to have complete access to items the user may have forgotten to sync.

As Mike and Omar point out, this can be dangerous, after all, the user is then allowing anyone with their account password complete access to the files on their computer (though I would argue one should have a password no one else knows, and a good password at that), but don’t worry — they thought of that too. If the computer you are using to access the remote files is not already a Trusted PC, then the user must enter a security code they receive on their mobile phone or an alternate email address.

More to Come

The blog post finishes off by saying that Microsoft will continue to increase the number of platforms that SkyDrive is available on, including Windows Phone “and others.” These features will become available “over the next several months,” so users will just have to sit tight.

In this post they also hinted at the ability to increase the amount of storage space available, and if the rumors from The Verge are correct, Microsoft will allow the purchasing of 20, 50 and 100GB of extra space for $10, $25 or $50 a year, respectively. These amounts will also include the 25GB of free space already provided. If these prices are correct, then Dropbox will have some serious competition, as their offer for 100GB of space comes in at $19.99 a month, or roughly $240 a year.

It looks like nothing is being overlooked in the next generation of Windows, that includes file management such as copying files from one location to another.

When copying files in Windows 7 each copy task gets its own dialog window, which can be a pain when attempting to monitor the current progress of each. But this will change with Windows 8, and the following areas the team would like to improve upon in the file copying experience:

• Unification – Instead of having each dialog having its own dedicated window, they will all be accessible in one unified experience.
• Simplification – Only give people the information they need instead of confusing users with a bunch of useless information.
• More control – Give users more control over their copying operations.

The image to the left shows an example of the new copy dialog to look forward to in Windows 8 — so long as nothing more is changed much.

Now users can pause copy operations in case they want to finish one file transfer in a more timely fashion, and of course cancelling an operation is simple as well. Each location is also clickable as well, allowing a user to open the location in Explorer — which may be somwhat useful.

As you can see the “less detailed” dialog no longer contains a time estimation (just the percentage of completion) — to which a reference to this XKCD comic was made — but it is still there, but only exposed when viewing more details.

Here is an image of the new detailed mode, which contains the current transfer speeds and a history of transfer speeds. When an operation is paused the graph will go from green to yellow, which some have requested be changed — such as me, as it really ought to be red.

The blog post writer (it was either Alex Simons or Steven Sinofsky, or an article written by Alex Simons published by Sinofsky, not really clear) said they did not invest in making the estimated time left more accurate as there are way to many variables such as network bandwidth and the possibility of other CPU taxing operations starting at any given time.

Finally, the file conflict dialog will also be getting an update, but one some have also complained about, such as being a user experience disaster. So take a look:

The items on the left are the source files and the items on the right are destination files. Files with the larger file size and most recent modification date will be in bold.

I have to agree that this new dialog isn’t that great compared to the current file conflict resolution dialog in Windows 7. The dialog does not make it clear as to what happens if neither file is selected, nor is there any “mass apply” option (other than the check boxes above all items) such as replacing the destination files with larger, smaller, newer or older versions. Can’t imagine what a pain this dialog may be with hundreds of items needing resolution.

Some of these updates are well welcomed such as the ability to pause a transfer operation and unification of all dialogs, but there are a few things still missing — which I read in the comments area.

Other welcomed additions would be the ability to queue operations, and well, a not disaster-of-a-resolution-dialog. Oh, and here is another: how about a decent ZIP archive extractor. Yes, there are things such as WinZip and 7-zip, but that is no excuse for ZIP’s (which are natively supported) to be extremely slow (such as extraction).

Oh, I almost forgot! Windows will no longer have annoying “Are you sure?” dialogs such as when moving a file to the Recycle Bin or when merging folders.

You can check out these new features in action in the following video (requires HTML5):

Notice the ribbon in the Explorer interface — its just hiding!

I apologize for how little I have been posting… School will start again in a few weeks which is when I was posting en masse because I used it to give me a break from school work. Hopefully I will resume posting regularly then.

Not too long ago, Microsoft issued a critical security advisory concerning shortcuts, wherein a computer could be exploited simply by the icon of a shortcut (.LNK files) being rendered. Many believed it would take some time for Microsoft to fix this issue due to the flaw affecting issues with code in Windows which dates back to Windows 95.

Luckily, they were wrong, as Microsoft will release an out-of-band patch on Monday to fix this critical security flaw once and for all. Meaning those speculating the patch would arrive in two weeks were nearly spot on.

Soon, no more need to disable icons

At the time of Microsoft confirming this security flaw, a workaround was described by Microsoft. This workaround completely disabled any and all icons, so all you would only see white rectangles in the place of your icons.

Also, many antivirus packages were updated with definitions to stop this flaw from harming their users, including Microsoft’s own Security Essentials software.