I'll let some one official answer this... but I think it's because editors usually mimics the page structure for files, and would do the same for blocks now in EPiServer 7+.

But why don't you just create two top-level folders; Blocks and Files. This is done in 5 seconds.

I agree with you. I have been confused by shared folders since the beginning, and a lot of our customers are confused as well. I don't know how many times I've been trying to upload files to the "Blocks" panel. I think it should be a setting that defaults to "false". At the very least, the UI of the folder views should be different in some way, maybe with different color themes or something.

However, you can do as Johan says and create two top-level folders. But I'm guessing it's a lot more work than 5 seconds for you since you have to move a lot of folders and files. :)

Good discussion, thanks for the feedback!

The assets pane is one of the areas which we want to redesign. It was actually designed the current way based on feedback from a couple of customers and partners, however we feel that we can improve it.

One of the design suggestions we have right now is to have one pane, but with facets. So you would still have one structure, but you would only see the items belonging to a selected category  (Blocks/Media). So you will remain at the same place in the folder structure, but will see either Blocks or Media files. A option to "hide empty folders" would work nice with this. So that if you select "Blocks", all folders not containing any Blocks will be hidden. The search bar would be used as a filter instead, so that the items listed in the pane are Blocks matching the query, ex "list".

This is hypothetical. So please feel free to share your thoughts, both on this suggestion, or to add how you would like to see us improve the assets pane.  

Hiding folders is probably not a good solution. How do you upload files to a folder that doesn't already have files?

I rather have two seperate trees for folders. But more important, be able to translate files, not sure how to handle the blob though, maybe we should be able to mark it as culture specific as well.

The option to hide empty folders would be a toggle, so you'd just toggle it of to show all folders again. 

Im taking all suggestions though! When we start working on a redesigned assets pane I will make sure that separate structures is one of the approaches we evaluate. 

This is an old thread, I know, but I thought I should post my question here since it's the same subject.

I'm using Episerver 11. The assets pane has probably been redesigned since this thread was started, but I still find it confusing. Folders for media and blocks are devided into their own tabs, that's great. However, all the folders are visible in both tabs. For example if I create a folder under "Media" it will also be visible under "Blocks". I can't add blocks to this folder, only upload media files, so it's just confusing that it's present when I'm working with blocks.

Is there an option in Episerver 11 (or newer) to hide "Media" folders when the user is in the "Blocks" tab and vice versa?

+1 

I think this is a major UX failure

Agree with this. Is there any specific use case for persisting directores created under "Blocks", within the "Media" store also? Or is this a design flaw?

Media and Blocks should be stored in different directories - it can be confusing for example when you're looking for a specific media item by browsing through the Assets pane, you can see that the directory exists where you expect the media item to sit, but are wondering why you can't see it. Only to realise you have the Blocks tab in focus instead of the Media tab..

I very much agree with this to! It is difficult to explain to the customer why this is arranged in such a strange way for the user!

I agree with this and I always need to point out that there is the same structure when holding education classes and in almost every case the studenst goes "why??".

So I would like to have different roots as well!

There's also the risk of deleting a block folder you think is empty, but may contain (unlinked) documents. And vice versa of course.

+1, the blocks and media needs to be clearly separated and not "duplicate" the folders for both views.