Re: [Usability]Preferred Applications Design

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

Hello Roberto,

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco wrote:

> 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

Not just IYHO, this is the common case indeed.

> 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;

Right, and my suggestion was to approach this system through a properties
notebook tab of the application launcher object.

> 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 Preferred Apps dialog as Seth proposed will quickly become too large
to handle when more app categories are added. But I agree something like
this is needed because we don't want to force the user to dive into the
MIME type system.

> 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.

True, and in fact the notion of an application should be disemphasized in
a document-centered UI.

Here's a weird suggestion. We know that dragging a document oject to a
launcher causes the launcher to activate and open the dragged document
when possible. How about "quick" creating an association once a user drags
a launcher to a document object? (choice would be given to associate for
only that one document or for all documents of its type). Of course, for
a11y reasons and all, a full-fledged UI would still be required, but
this could be the administrative tool you talked about...

regards,

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
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