A Question About The "folder.jpg" Folder Option

I was wondering something. I think we all know the old-standard trick of placing an image in the root of a folder with the "folder.jpg" extension in order to generate cover art for it. I see that this is still a feature that has carried over into Windows 10.

I was wondering how long this has been a feature that's come standard in Windows? I believe I can trace it back to Windows XP, but not sure if it was something you could do before that. The reason I ask is that I'm going to be setting up a frontend using this method, and I'm trying to determine if this is a relatively new feature that Microsoft might drop in the future or if it's always been part of Windows functionality (IE: meaning it's likely to be kept around).

Thanks!

 

Folder.jpg was introduced with XP. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP#Other_shell_and_UI_improvements
Although I don't see any correlation between the age of a feature and concerns that MS would drop it. Something you can't rely on ...

 

Hi and thanks for the reply. While I agree there is of course no guarantees, from what I understand the folder.jpg method has become the most popular method of housing cover art and is widely accepted as the most universal method. I'd assume (or rather would like to think) that MS has adopted this as a standard feature of Windows moving forward, no different than folks always wanting to have access to a Start Menu (as MS learned the hard way).

Unless there's something I'm missing and there is a better, more secure method?

 

"Setting up a frontend" isn't much explanatory to me (my English skills may not be good enough though). What I can say so far is that the explorer of my Win 10 laptop doesn't change the icon of the folder (although it worked on XP). If you want to set up a software that deals with the folder.jpg files - why shouldn't it work (even if Microsoft would change some behavior in future)?