Re: Hide extensions [Was: Nautilus]

[Jan de Groot <jan jgc homeip net>]

On Thu, 2005-12-22 at 10:36 +0200, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> to 2005-12-22 klockan 08:24 +0000 skrev Shane O'Connor:
> 
> > IMHO if we want to get people to shift from Windoze then we're gonna
> > have to ensure the move is painless as possible. That doesn't
> > necessarily we have to mirror windoze behaviour but we should definitely
> > avoid making the default for gnome more cumbersome...
> 
> Is there BTW any usability tests, polls, or whatever, that would report
> the usefulness of Windows Explorer's "Hide extensions for known file
> types" that by default is On?
> 
> (Personally I find it an absolutely horrible default setting and
> invariably turn it off on all Windows boxes I use, but I am almost
> capable of seeing the reasoning behind it... and can certainly believe
> it if somebody tells me that it in fact has been shown to reduce
> confusion among novice users.)

The hide extensions feature in windows really is horrible. The other
side that is annoying in windows: when you turn it on, want to rename a
file, it selects the whole filename, including the extension. You enter
a new name and it deletes the extension if you don't take care. In
nautilus, when renaming a file with extension, the extension is not
selected by default. This is the middle between showing the extension
and the usability of not showing it. I think we should keep it this way
and not even think about hiding the extension of known files.