Remove the Explorer View from a Document Library Template

If you are building a custom document library solution, there may be a time where you don't want users to use the Explorer View of the document library.  I am talking about the VIEW itself and not the Open with Windows Explorer action in this case.  The correct way to do is of course is to create your own custom document library template (I'll be covering that in a future post) and then modify the schema.xml file.  If you want to go crazy and unsupported, you can also modify the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\DocumentLibrary\DocLib\schema.xml of the built-in DocumentLibrary feature and accomplish the same result for the out-out-the-box document library.  Removing it is just a matter of removing the appropriate View element in the schema.xml file.  In this case, you are looking for an element similar to the one below.

<View BaseViewID="3" Type="HTML" WebPartZoneID="Main" DisplayName="$Resources:core,Explorer_View;" Url="Forms/WebFldr.aspx" SetupPath="pages\webfldr.aspx" RequiresClientIntegration="TRUE" ReadOnly="TRUE">

It will have a BaseViewId of 3 and a Display Name indicating that it is the explorer view.  Just delete this entire View element and reactivate the feature and this view will not be present on any new document libraries you create.  Again, I recommend creating your own document library template instead of modifying the built-in one.

It will only remove it on new document libraries created.  Any existing ones you would have to remove manually from each library.

http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2008/05/29/how-to-remove-the-explorer-view-from-a-document-library-template.aspx