Guy came to me at work today, desperate. He said he often couldn't open files that were emailed to him. He said he'd change the file name. Right away I figured out that he was changing the whole file name including the file extension, so the computer couldn't figure out which program to use to open the file. I renamed the file so it had '.pdf' at the end and his file opened. He was so relieved and thanked me over and over. Seems like a simple thing to us computer types. The guy called me a genius, but many of my techie friends would probably think unkind things about someone making such a simple mistake. Thing is, they'd be wrong. This is an example of a technical solution that was made a long time ago, and forcing non-technical types to jump through hoops that they shouldn't. Thing is this is really silly when you think about it. When you rename a file you really shouldn't be able to change a file's type. You shouldn't be able to rename MyPuppy.jpg into MyPuppy.doc, it's a Jpeg image not a Word doc. It doesn't make sense and it's wrong. It's a legacy issue that we've just accepted, it's a huge usability no-no and it's flat out wrong. As computers are becoming more and more embraced by the non techie public at large this kind of thing will be less and less acceptable.
