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Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

This is the same bad idea as hiding file extensions.

I'm actually not sure hiding file extensions was a bad idea. As a developer I hate it, but I'm not sure for ordinary users they should be visible or editable as easily as the file name.

Why do we have to design for the lowest capacity users? Are they the largest demographic, or doesn't that matter?

Well it depends on what you're designing. For a general-purpose OS used by everyone and their grandmothers, it makes sense to have them in mind and let the more advanced users customize the settings. And I would assume non-computer-savvy folks are indeed the largest demographic too, though I don't have data on it. And also, if you believe it's a good thing for the world to become digital (say, to reduce carbon emissions), you need products and services to be accessible to most kinds of users.

They're the least able and likely to make their way to settings to change it.

I can tell you it's been a total nightmare when family members have been phished and hacked. It's happened to grandparents on both sides of the family.

One of them has learned and is still getting better, but the other has been trying for 20 years and computers are turning into a phobia for her. As everything moves online there is a non-trivial portion of the population getting shut out. Government services are moving online for the most part.

Imagine not being able to help your grandkids with homework, or even do video calls during the pandemic, without a fear of losing your life savings.

I don't like the dumbing down of browsers and the web, but I do believe we (computer professionals, etc...) have to find a way to solve this problem for everyone.

.jpg.exe

There's no perfect tradeoff.

But what's the advantage of hiding file extensions? Windows already asks if you're sure when you try to change a file's extension.

The advantage is you don't show something that laymen probably wouldn't want to change 99% of the time. That way they don't do it by accident and mess up their files. Not every user even knows what a "file extension" is in the first place. Or whether/when it should be changed. See if your grandma can comprehend that error message.

Windows already asks if you're sure when you try to change a file's extension.

I already addressed this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27476900

You show extensions to users not so they can change them, but so they can see that a file is actually a .jpg instead of a .exe with the icon of a .jpg.

Your grandma isn't going to look at .exe every single time when she sees a photo icon.

I have taught my mother to do just that.

Until yesterday I had a IMO even more annoying problem: Dead keys on a qwertz keyboard and "," as the separator on the numpad. So glad that I finally made a custom layout that fixed those.

I agree about editable, but it's a critical piece of information. Users already deal with the concept that some files are images, some are audio, some are documents and so forth without apparent problems understanding that. The concept that different types of documents have different random letters at the end isn't a huge step.

Pretending extensions aren't a thing hasn't been successful in terms of security (see ATTACHMENT.doc.exe for details) and I question whether it's at the end of the day provided any benefits from reduced complexity.

> Users already deal with the concept that some files are images, some are audio, some are documents and so forth without apparent problems understanding that.

I'm not sure they do to remotely the extent that they would need to, for file extensions to make sense. I expect that, to the average (say) grandma, there are 3 or 4 kinds of files:

Video, Image, Audio, Other

The first three match human senses. The ear (audio), the eye (images), the combination with motion (video). People have understood those are inherently different things since their childhoods. If your grandam is more advanced, maybe she also understands documents (like PDF), that represent physical papers she has in her hand. In any case, those are all reflections of physical things she already understands, but that's about it. She probably doesn't even understand .exe given that every app she sees would have a shortcut icon.

Now you're proposing that jumping from that to .jpg/.png/.bmp/.tif/.jpeg/.tiff/.webp/.gif/.jp2/.mp3/.aac/.wav/.wma/.mp4/.mpg/.mov/etc. is a huge step? Given how confused I know even I have been about file types in the past and what they mean, I... don't agree.

And sorry, but security is secondary here. Usability comes first.

Your example with matching human senses is excellent (I will reuse it) but I do not understand the link with extensions.

How would showing or not an extension change that? Nobody would expect grandma to make any decisions on the extension.

I suppose it is hard for me to understand because I’ve never been confused about what the file format is, or the association that they have with default applications on a desktop.

I’ve been a position where I had to help advertisers with images for their web shops. Many of the advertiser to that understand aspect ratio, a pixel size, compression or image format at a basic level. I do not think that the concept of a landscape versus portrait image is difficult, nor is the idea that one image is made out of 100,000 squares and another one’s made out of 1 million, or that some have 12 colors like crayons and others have millions like a photo. But many people don’t try to advance their knowledge at all, depending on others to do their computer work for them. This wastes a huge amount of everyone’s time. I don’t really think it’s a good system to teach people that they can operate with the absolute minimum knowledge needed to operate a computer. At times it reminds me of children who haven’t taken the steps to do something like learn to take the lid off a jar and so coming to get you to do it every time even a year after they could’ve been doing it themselves.

I do understand that some people just don’t seem to get this stuff. My parents both have advanced degrees and were using computers when I was born, but they seem to have been struggling with the basics of emails and logins for 20 years now.

The problem here is that we we are discussing systems within windows and windows has a poor system for all of this. I’m not sure what Microsoft can do to improve it since I can’t really think of many positive changes they’ve made in this regard in the past 20 years, other than confirming execution with admin rights.

The main problem that comes up here is security. I agree that file formats don’t particularly matter to the average user, it only matters if a legitimate file opens in the right application when they click on it, and clicking on what appears to be a safe file doesn’t actually trigger an executable. Perhaps windows could prevent files from having a double extension. Perhaps MS could not allow executable files to be changed to different extensions. I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s many instances where hiding the extension has been a security problem, and I don’t know what evidence there is that it helps anyone use the system besides speculation. You can only dumb down a system so much before it loses necessary functionality.

Ever clicked on document.exe?

Ever heard of Windows Defender?

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