I have a situation that I need to do the same too. If you get any
responses, please let me know.

Depending on that collateral damage you might try disabling the "Browse
Directories" or "User Remote Interfaces" Site Permissions for that Web
Application in Central Admin. The second one  may break Office
applications though. Something to look at though.

Out of curiosity, why such a harsh stance on folders? I'm curious if
there's something I'm missing about them.

Here is why I would like to disable it:

Internal MOSS implementation, I have a site  collection setup for a
client. The folks at the client can access the site through Juniper's
IVE (Instant Virtual Extranet). Everything works fine for the client,
except the "Open with Windows Explorer" link.

Here is what I think the problem is: on a client pc outside the
corporate networks, when clicking on "Open with Windwos Explorer", the
IE browser does not aware the existence of the IVE, so it tries to
connect to MOSS via Internet. Of course this won't work. Above is what
I "think" the problem is, not 100% sure.

Ideally if it is possible, I would like to disable it only for clients
connected via IVE, not sure it is possible.

Maybe this is a bug with MOSS and I should contact MSFT.

You can remove  menu entries by creating a 'HideCustomAction' Feature.
However, you won't be able to leave  it in place for site  owners. It's
an all or nothing thing. You might be able to remove the existing one
and replace it with a 'CustomAction' Feature that would be set  to be
visible for only Site owners  (Admins).

I'm sure I can live without it, since I know other ways  around it. And I
figured it would have to be a feature, but I'm not 100% on how to code it.

Well, for us, folders  are a limitation. They limit the file  structure to
someone else's narrow view of what the "folder structure" should be. There is
also the 2000 ish file limit within a folder  that does not exist in a document
library. Our stance is that the folder name, or the category of the folder
name, actually should be an item of metadata instead.

Let me correct one  misconception. The soft limit of 2,000 items exists
in the root file folder  just like it does in every folder. If you don't
use folders  at all then you should limit your document  libraries to no
more than 2,000 files. Without folders the 2,000 limit DOES exist for a
document library.

I fully understand what you are saying Jay.

Unfortunately, folders  in 2007 are a necessary evil. The SharePoint rule
of 2000 applies to most containers, including document  libraries. While
there isn't a hard coded limit, most people find  that scalability
suffers exponentially as the number of items in a container grows beyond
2000.

So, while you can have as many documents you want in the root of a
document library, after 2000 documents the library  will not only be slow
for the person using it will put a strain on the server farm for
everyone using it. However, you can still scale well with 2000 _folders_
in the root of your document library. If each folder  contains roughly
2000 documents you can theoretically place 4,000,000 documents into your
library before scalability becomes a concern.

See the document on working with large lists in MOSS 2007 on Technet:
http://tinyurl.com/3csefj

Folders are 2x more efficient in sorting large lists than are indexed
columns. If you have large document  libraries, they are a necessity.
Secondly, you can use folders  to 'filter' content types in the New menu.

I fully agree with folder  structure. They are indeed a limitation on a
functional point of view.
But I hope that using views and limiting this to < 2000 poses no
problem?

Fortunately we are not at a point where that will be an issue. And it is highly
unlikely (although not impossible) for us to have more than roughly 1500 files
in any one  of our document  libraries at any given time. We have already run
into an issue where folders  have created  an unwelcome nuisance. If we didn't
want to utilize the features of MOSS, we could use a network file  share and a
vpn. We aren't using any workflows (yet), and are really just trying to break
in our users  gradually on using MOSS. We want to break any "bad" habits before
they start. We do have a folder  structure in one of our document libraries, but
that was simply to ease the transition away from the network shares, and that is
only available in one view, all other views are folderless. If there was a way
to have a document in one folder in one view and be able to set  up a completely
different folder structure in another view with the exact same files, this
really wouldn't be an
issue. Because our users reference files in different ways  for different
reasons, we didn't want to limit their options based on an arbitrary folder
strucutre. I hope that makes sense. It's not that we want to eliminate folders
completely, we just don't want our contributors making up their own folders.
Because a folder named hk-lk-134-013465-eng-08-mech, doesn't make any sense to
anyone except the guy who created it.

I found the solution here:
jclabaut.free.fr/.../52-Hide-Open-with-window\
s-explorer-menu-in-list-actions.html#extended

I did make a change though. Instead of deleting the section recommended, I
changed the PermissionsString from "UseClientIntegration" to "ManageWeb".

An idea I got from your referred website is to use a CEWP to remove
"open in windows  explorer" for the current page. For example, you can
add the following javascript code to a CEWP on the allitem.aspx page:

<script type="text/javascript">
function HideOpenInExplorer()
{
var viewInExplorer = document.getElementById("zz24_OpenInExplorer");
if (viewInExplorer != null)
{
if (viewInExplorer.parentNode != null)
viewInExplorer.parentNode.removeChild(viewInExplorer);
}
}
</script>

<script language="javascript">
HideOpenInExplorer();
</script>

Also please note the elementid is zz24_xxx, instead of zz22_xxx on the
website you referred.

Above change of course only removes the link  on the page with the CEWP.

In SharePoint document  library there is an option  in action menu  i.e "open in Windows Explorer",When we click this one  we can see all the documents in a window explorer,where we can drag and drop the documents for the document library  .

But in case of a SharePoint generic list we don't have this option.To implement this functionality we need to add the following script in the page, and call the script method from a event. In SharePoint list, if a list Item contains any attachment, it creates a folder  with the name of the item id and add the attachments inside that folder. When we open  the list in Window explorer  we can see the folders  for the list items which contain attachments, here we can drag and drop the documents to save  as attachment for the list Item.

<style>
.httpFolder {behavior: url(#default#httpFolder);}
</style>
<script>
function fnOpenFolderView() {
oDAV.navigateFrame("url for the list", "_self");
}

Thanks,
Bijayani
www.mindfiresolutions.com/Sharepoint-Support.htm