Specifications

11
Turning On File Extensions
1
FIGURE 1.3 With file extensions turned off, it’s tough to tell one file from another.
Turning On File Extensions
Microsoft figures that, crucial or not, the file extension concept is just too hard for new
users to grasp. Therefore, right out of the box, Windows Explorer doesn’t display file
extensions. This may not sound like a big whoop, but not being able to see the extension
for each file can be downright confusing. To see why, suppose you have a folder with
multiple documents that use the same primary name. This is a not uncommon scenario,
but it’s also a fiendish one because it’s often difficult to tell which file is which.
For example, Figure 1.3 shows a folder with 18 different files, all apparently named
Project. Windows unrealistically expects users to tell files apart just by examining their
icons. To make matters worse, if the file is an image, Windows 7 shows a thumbnail of the
image instead of an icon. (This happens in thumbnail views such as Tiles, Medium Icons,
and Large Icons.) The result is that in Figure 1.3 it’s impossible to tell at a glance which
image is a GIF, which is a JPEG, and so on.