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Why We Should Stop Hiding File-Name Extensions
An anonymous reader writes 14 years after the Anna Kournikova virus took advantage of users' ignorance about file-name extensions in order to wreak worldwide havoc, virus writers and hackers are still taking advantage of the tendency of popular consumer operating systems to hide file-name extensions: Windows users still need to activate extension visibility manually – even though email-transmitted viruses depend most on less savvy users who will never do this. Additionally applications on even the latest versions of Apple's OSX operating system still require the user to 'opt in' to including a file-name extension during an initial save. In looking at some of the eccentricities of the modern user experience, this article argues that it might be time to admit that users need to understand, embrace and responsibly use the only plain-text, obvious indicator of what a file actually is.
The crap ones like Windows and OSX, they hide it because they assume the user is a drooling moron.
And most of the time they are right.
The first thing I do on windows is change the settings to show tilename extensions. Much of the confusion I see in others can be directly traced to the fact that they don't know what their files are.
Stop being afraid to make someone learn something useful to use a computer.
That being said, don't make people learn useless things. Design a powerful set of useful things to learn each of which is valuable and worth learning and remembering and then reward people for learning them by maintaining their usefulness
Making things overly simple robs users of the power to make things simple for themselves, and ends upt complicating their interaction with the computer.
...
The malware writers will never agree to i!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The filetype is now contained in the icon
The icon of an executable is set by the executable. Enjoy your porn.jpg.exe with a thumbnail icon.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
On Windows, extensions are meaningful to the operating system. It doesn't identify all files by magic numbers. Files are typed by their extensions. If the file is "fishhead.jpeg" then it is not a Win32 executable binary (barring flaws in the JPEG rendering system that lead to arbitrary execution).
You miss that it isn't like that in Windows either. A file named fishhead.jpeg can indeed be a a Win32 executable binary that gets executed by the OS as a binary if called without a named program to open it. That depends on what the end user and the programs he (spit) trusts have set the .jpeg extension to signify. It is only a recommendation. Windows provides defaults, but it is silly to presume that no program would ever be mean enough to change any of that on you.
You cannot trust the extensions any more than you can trust the "From:" address in an e-mail. Not in Windows either.
Looking at the name extension will tell you what the system will attempt to do with it by default. This can be very important to know.
No shortage of stupid user interface choices. Some of the ones I've hated the most.
* Hiding menu options, aka personalized menus
* Wholesale rearranging and renaming of user interfaces between versions, esp. for infrequently used options
* Super secret hidden files.
* Windows 8
Whenever I see a Windows desktop with file extensions disabled, I always try to explain to the person that they should be switched back on, and most people are quite happy to do so (they only had them off because that was the default).
However I was quite dismayed when I looked at my mother's laptop (which I had installed Linux Mint on for her), and she had no file extensions either. It turned out that she thought they looked untidy, and had gone through and manually removed the extensions from every single file in her home directory!
Fortunately the file and mmv commands made short work of fixing this, but I was surprised to say the least.
doing UUCP support with someone who has to have Unix characters (like bang and pipe)
Odd. I found most receptionists understood what I meant by bang and pipe perfectly well.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hear the faint and cryptic laughter of Steve Jobs echoing in the distance...
Hiding Things?
Well of course, because modern UI design is all about obfuscating control over your device and interface.
Microsoft and the rest(this includes Linux desktops) don't want a "cluttered" user experience. UI designers seem to forget that people to need to modify and control their device and interface.
UI designers are too quick to "googlify" interfaces to such a degree that vast uncounted eons of time are wasted simply trying to modify simple things because UI designers have mandated a "spartan" and oh so Sprockets-like look and feel.
Users are tricked into thinking they shouldn't see the nuts and bolts.
Users are treated like idiots, and then become idiots.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The extension vs file system property is a trade off case. If I see a .EXE file I expect it to be a binary file. if I see a file which a 755 mod to it. How would I know if it is a binary file vs. a script without looking into it. Renaming a .bat file to a .exe will prevent it from running. A file that is chmod 755 will try to run. So the file extension is actually a good way to know what type of file it is.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How would I know if it is a binary file vs. a script without looking into it.
type 'file /path/to/file'.
e.g:
/bin/bash
/bin/bash: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=bla, stripped
user@host:~ $ file
or:
user@host:~ $ file a_script.rb
a_script.rb: a ruby1.9.1 script, ASCII text executable
So the file extension is actually a good way to know what type of file it is.
No, it's brain dead. The filename is a name. The filetype should be another piece of metadata. (and not just an executable flag either - a complete file type.)
If the file type needs to be seen by the user, then that's a UI design issue, not a reason to have brain dead mixed purpose metadata fields.