Re: [Usability]Preferred Applications Design

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> > 1) Long term, the preferred applications system needs to either
> > complement or replace the file types system. Having both is confusing.
>
>
> What exactly do you mean by 'the file types system'? A preferred
> applications system doesn't allow the user to specify a different app for
> one specific file of a certain type, and I think that should remain
> possible.

So far, AFAIK, the preferred applications system is a very simple way to 
complement the MIME system associating a choice number of applications 
(web browser, text editor) to a small number of file types (web 
pages/URIs, text files). I think it should be expanded, but not to the 
point of replacing the MIME system. See below.

> > 1) Not "infinitely extendable" like a List would be.
>
>
> Yes, this leads me to conclude that a Preferred Apps system is
> unsustainable in the long run.
>
> Havoc made a good suggestion in another post in this thread:
>
> hp> You could probably address both of these by having a tab in the
> hp> properties for an application (= launcher in the menu?) that lets you
> hp> change which files the application will be used to open.

But IMHO Seth is 1000% right in noting that 99% of times the user will 
try to associate an application to a file type when he clicks on an icon 
and finds that there's no default application set to open that file (or 
he doesn't like the default application, e.g. Quanta Gold for HTML 
files). The file type association thing should work both ways:

1. there should be a centralised system where you (= possibly the system 
administrator) have all the power of the MIME system and associate files 
to applications via file types and sub-types;

2. OTOH, it should be fairly easy for an user doing the following:

  a) associate a till now unrecognized file type to an application;
  b) change the default application for a file type.

I think that Seth's proposal fits very well for 2., all the more so as 
the central MIME system currently doesn't work very well and will 
probably be rewritten to be a common standard between desktop 
environments (at least this is what I understood and hope would happen :)

Going the other way round, i.e. moving the burden of the file type 
system to the application properties, is not very intuitive for the 
user: you have files under your eyes all the time, the same is not true 
for applications.

Ciao

--
Roberto Rosselli Del Turco      e-mail:	rosselli cisi unito it
Dipartimento di Scienze			rosselli ling unipi it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)