Re: [Usability] Faded File Extensions

[Jason Hoover <jasonhoover verizon net>]

[First message seems to have been eaten by the mail beast, sorry if this duplicates.]

On Sat, 2005-12-24 at 13:30 +0000, Alan Horkan wrote:

> I believe it is not because it is a "scary technical detail" (at least not
> primarily) but rather that the extension is awkward when trying to rename
> files.  

I've always just found them really ugly and distracting. Especially when
I have a lot of similarly named files in the same place.

It's easier to scan:

bob	ted	alice	  frank	    alan

Than it is:

bob.jpg ted.jpg alice.jpg frank.jpg alan.jpg

To me, one of the more important parts of a GUI is to present
information to a user in such a way that their brain can handle it as
effectively and efficiently as possible. Repetitive blobs of ASCII tend
to make reading and searching for the next object tedious.

> Nautilus has already made efforts to address the awkward renaming
> issue but perhaps more could be done.

Somewhere between hiding the extensions and making them visible to
rename them, is just hiding them until the user decides to rename the
file, putting the cursor before the extension. (Which, I think may be
what Apple does, but I didn't remember that until after I wrote it.)

-Jason