Whats the point of windows defaulting to hide known file extensions?

[TallBill]

I'm trying to help my sister with some movie files off of her digital camera over AIM since I can't physically help her, and figuring out file extensions is a pain. She's smart and picks up on stuff quick, but if she could just see file extensions it'd be so much easier.

 

[Nothinman]

Because MS wants you to identify file types by their icon and not care what the extension is. But relying on the extension (whether you show it or not) is pretty dumb these days, you'd think MS would have added some sort of mime-type capabilities to explorer by now.

 

[TallBill]

Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Nothinman]

Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

But when all you want to do is play it in WinAMP the extension is irrelevant as long as WinAMP does actually support it.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

But when all you want to do is play it in WinAMP the extension is irrelevant as long as WinAMP does actually support it.

I suppose, the file extension should still be visible though. Perhaps the shell option should instead be to "lock" file extensions instead of hide them. In Vista, when you hit F2 to rename a file, it only highlights the part of the filename before the extension to avoid accidentaly deleting the extension.

 

[n7]

Renaming is a b!tch when extensions are visible...

 

[Nothinman]

I suppose, the file extension should still be visible though. Perhaps the shell option should instead be to "lock" file extensions instead of hide them. In Vista, when you hit F2 to rename a file, it only highlights the part of the filename before the extension to avoid accidentaly deleting the extension.

I don't disagree I'm just saying what I believe their rationale is for the default setting. And yea, MS did seem to take some of the usability features from Nautilus and integrate them with Explorer in Vista. =)

 

[LightningRider]

What fyleow said is what I think is true.

Too many noobs just rename something and then don't realise they've erased the extension if it is left on. Most don't even know what an extension is.

 

[Nothinman]

Most don't even know what an extension is.

And they shouldn't have to, I can name a file anything I want on Linux and Nautilus will use the mime info to display the correct file type.

 

[imported_Ned Flanders]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

But when all you want to do is play it in WinAMP the extension is irrelevant as long as WinAMP does actually support it.

I suppose, the file extension should still be visible though. Perhaps the shell option should instead be to "lock" file extensions instead of hide them. In Vista, when you hit F2 to rename a file, it only highlights the part of the filename before the extension to avoid accidentaly deleting the extension.

Sweet.

 

[nerp]

Yeah vista handles this nicely since you're more often renaming a file and not the extension rather than changing the extension.

 

[SalladDazed]

Originally posted by: TallBill
Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

I think, to be clearer, they want users to identify files by virtue of which application will handle them. Therefore, rather than fuss with the tens of thousands (or more, if you count extensions that go beyond 3 characters) of plausible extension combinations, users can instead deal with the relatively manageable dozens of installed applications/"handlers".

So the 50 files with 50 different extensions that will be handled by Winamp will all just be displayed with Winamp-assigned icons.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because MS wants you to identify file types by their icon and not care what the extension is. But relying on the extension (whether you show it or not) is pretty dumb these days, you'd think MS would have added some sort of mime-type capabilities to explorer by now.

Silly Nothinman, mime-type is the Gnu/*nix way of doing things (aka "dirty commies").

Actually, I wonder if maybe there is a patent on it?

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because MS wants you to identify file types by their icon and not care what the extension is. But relying on the extension (whether you show it or not) is pretty dumb these days, you'd think MS would have added some sort of mime-type capabilities to explorer by now.

Silly Nothinman, mime-type is the Gnu/*nix way of doing things (aka "dirty commies").

Actually, I wonder if maybe there is a patent on it?

they didn't take enough....scp, ftp, smp, nfs all handled in your file browser is very nice

 

[Smilin]

Because what does "thisfile.ifj" mean?

How about "thisfile" that has an icon with a little record and a music note on it?



You're only asking this question because you're experienced enough to have memorized some extensions over the years.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Pretty rediculous when "Winamp Media File" could be one of out 50 different extensions.

But when all you want to do is play it in WinAMP the extension is irrelevant as long as WinAMP does actually support it.

I suppose, the file extension should still be visible though. Perhaps the shell option should instead be to "lock" file extensions instead of hide them. In Vista, when you hit F2 to rename a file, it only highlights the part of the filename before the extension to avoid accidentaly deleting the extension.

Really? You know by the extension name what the data file is without the icon giving you a clue to the application which processes it? If so, what are the following files 😉

.A11
.AAS
.ABF
.ABM
.ACO
.ACT (ok, which of the 4 common uses?)
.CAM
.CCITT

I think you get the idea. End users shouldn't have to understand this stuff. They should click on the track with the same name they hear on the radio and it should just work. They shouldnt have to know about mp3, wmf, wav, etc...

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: TallBill
I'm trying to help my sister with some movie files off of her digital camera over AIM since I can't physically help her, and figuring out file extensions is a pain. She's smart and picks up on stuff quick, but if she could just see file extensions it'd be so much easier.

To your OP, can't you just tell her to drag off the files that have the movie icon?

 

[Nothinman]

I think you get the idea. End users shouldn't have to understand this stuff. They should click on the track with the same name they hear on the radio and it should just work. They shouldnt have to know about mp3, wmf, wav, etc...

And as you hinted in your previous comment about .ACT files a single extension can possibly mean multiple things so they're not even a great way to identify files. I mean hell, how many crappy 3rd party devs use (or at least used to) use .dat for their databases? Using the information in the file data itself and looking it up in a mime database is the best way to go and I can't believe MS hasn't made Explorer do that yet.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I think you get the idea. End users shouldn't have to understand this stuff. They should click on the track with the same name they hear on the radio and it should just work. They shouldnt have to know about mp3, wmf, wav, etc...

And as you hinted in your previous comment about .ACT files a single extension can possibly mean multiple things so they're not even a great way to identify files. I mean hell, how many crappy 3rd party devs use (or at least used to) use .dat for their databases? Using the information in the file data itself and looking it up in a mime database is the best way to go and I can't believe MS hasn't made Explorer do that yet.

Well, its a very expensive process when you have to have identifiers run against an open possible set of outcomes... Yes, there are probably 20 parsers that handle 90% of the cases, but the other 10% becomes quite difficult.

 

[Nothinman]

Well, its a very expensive process when you have to have identifiers run against an open possible set of outcomes... Yes, there are probably 20 parsers that handle 90% of the cases, but the other 10% becomes quite difficult.

And most of that 10% is MS' own documents since they stupidly reuse the same header for all of their office docs and even msi packages. =) Nautilus seems to handle it pretty well. The largest directory I could think of right now took ~5s to open and would probably be about the same on Windows if you opened a directory with 2000 executables in it since it would open them all to find the correct icon in the binary's resources.