TFS 2008 Power Tools were released some days ago (you can download the setup here). The package includes some command line utilities, the TFS Best Practice Analyzer, the Build Notification Tool, the Process Template Editor, and it also have some extensions to the Team Explorer IDE (more details about the Power Tools can be found here).

In this release there is a new IDE extension called "Navigate to Windows Explorer":

It allows to open a new Windows Explorer window directly to the Local Path of the selected folder in Source Control Explorer (this feature also works in the Find in Source Control results window).

This feature is very useful especially with folders with file types not directly mapped in Visual Studio.

 

There is only one little problem with the tool. You can select a folder also in the right pane of the Source Control Explorer, but the Windows Explorer window is opened in the Local Path of the selected folder in the tree view on the left (the actual path is the one near the Local Path label, and not the selected folder):

This can cause some confusion if the parent folder is not mapped in the Workspace, but the selected folder is mapped:

 

Apart this little problem, it's really a useful feature. I hope that it will be included in the upcoming version of Team Explorer, like some of the previous Power Tools that were included in Team Explorer 2008.

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