Icon-mime type associations

[Frans Englich]

On Thursday 16 September 2004 01:48, Ryan Gammon wrote:

A common use of mimetype icons is to follow up the document/context centric 
model; an icon tries to resemble what it represents as close as possible in 
order to make the user's association steps as short as possible. Functional 
names is another example. If cases like this(3rd party branding, I guess) is 
the major reason for the usage of such an mechanism, it would be a step 
backwards in terms of usability, AFAICT.

Another aspect is how much influence 3rd parties should have on the system, 
and hence who "decides" how the system should be. For example(from anecdotal 
evidence), in MS Windows, the installing of applications is quite intrusive 
since they change MIME-association priorities, icons, etc. -- "This 
application should You use". I think holding back 3rd parties' influence 
would gain the user(whom's concern is not only one application), promote 
consistency & usability, and help avoiding the chaos of applications which 
Windows have. (as Jakub discussed)


Two loose cents,

			Frans