A trivial question that bugs me

It's of no practical importance, but I've wondered about this for years. Why is it that the

"QuickLaunch/UserPinned/Taskbar/ImplicitAppShortcuts"

group of folders are all buried inside a folder called

"C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer"

even though they have nothing to do with Internet Explorer?

Dragon,

It's probably a designation internal to Microsoft. The desktop explorer and Internet explorer were originally intended (I think) to be two different views on the internet. Indeed, even now, in a Windows explorer you can type a URL and IE (or whatever your default browser is) will be brought up to render it. Probably just administrative. Company politics. Many design decisions are made for reasons that have nothing to do with external marketing. This looks like one of them.

-Max

No doubt you're right. By the way, do you have any idea what the empty folder called "Implicit App Shortcuts" is meant for?

It could be due to Microsoft's wanting to (at least at one time) blur the distinction between accessing things on your local PC via file explorer and accessing things on the internet with Internet Explorer. So that organization seemed logical.

I remember that irritating so-called "Active Desktop' in IE4 (or was it 5). Could that be what you're thinking of? Wenda.

No, I never used the Active Desktop but I remember it.

Dragon Drop said:

"C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer"

even though they have nothing to do with Internet Explorer?

Click to expand...

Because, back in the days of Windows 98, when the quick launch was first created, it was a function of the Active Desktop, which was part of Internet Explorer.

Even though the desktop shell is no longer associated with IE, the location has persisted.

Ah, Mystere! Great minds follow like paths. Same answer, posted at the same time.
I didn't have the net then, and it annoyed the daylights out of me. It was the first thing I'd turn off, after Windows Messenger.
Wenda.

Dragon Drop said:

No doubt you're right. By the way, do you have any idea what the empty folder called "Implicit App Shortcuts" is meant for?

Click to expand...

Folder names can be deceptive but if I parse that name for it's meaning.

Implicit - internal or secret maybe?
App Shortcuts - self-explanatory.

They might place shortcut links that are not presented visibly on the desktop or in an explorer in this folder.

-Max

According to here:

Interesting Things I have found in the Windows 7 Beta « How-To Geek Forums

"AppData\Roaming\Quick Launch\User Pinned\ImplicitAppShortcuts - This directory does the same as above only I think it's for Windows to automatically pin things like Help and Support when they are relevent to an open program and then remove them when that program is closed."

So it appears that this is a temporary directory used to create temporary shortcuts in certain contextual situations.

Thanks.