Re: [Usability] Chabada's Suggestions

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:21:12 +1200
> From: Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>
> To: Gnome usability <usability gnome org>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Chabada's Suggestions
>
> On Jun 25, 2006, at 7:16 AM, Kirk Bridger wrote:
> > ...
> > I don't like the way Windows uses file extensions to determine
> > filetype.

It is a fairly fast way of doing things.

> > I think it is much more useful to have the system figure
> > out what filetype it is.

There certainly used to be an option to use full file type detection in
Nautilus, which was much more necessary several years ago as some
developers intentionally did not use any file extensions but most do
nowadays.

Even if we had a system where we did not need to use file extensions I
would generally add them back in for my own use, they are especially
useful for simple pattern matching on the command line.
For example:
ls -lgh *.png

> > Windows ended up providing users with a
> > means of hiding file extensions and we all know how that turned out.
> > I love being able to send a .exe file through my exchange server's
> > filter simply by renaming it .txt.

I've seen people embed huge video files inside Word Documents just to
bypass stupid filters.  It is a system only useful for preventing users
from accidentally shooting themselves in the foot but that wont stop those
determined to wreck their computer.

> The converse of that is the friend of mine who renamed something.bmp to
> something.gif and wondered why it didn't get converted.

A very familiar situation.  It didn't help that some web authoring tools
such as Microsoft Frontpage failed to discourage users from including
massive uncompressed bitmaps on their web pages.

It would sure be an improvement to offer to convert the file instead of
issuing pointless - inevitably ignored - warnings the way Microsoft does.

-- 
Alan