You know that tiny little emoticon who bangs his head on the wall? That’s what I feel like doing now Can you believe that explaining something as simple as filename extension can create a big hooha? When you try to open a file without extension, Windows will ‘complain’ and ask you to select what program to use. Apparently some people think that this means there is something wrong with the file because they can’t open it. And people start shouting that we have major technical problems which must be solved pronto.

One thing that make this problem worse is that there is this annoying feature of Explorer which allows you to hide file extension when viewing your folders so you can’t tell if the file has an extension or not except from looking at the icon. But people who don’t know how to open an extension-less file most probably won’t look at the icon either. Try to explain about this feature to them and you’ll be banging your head to the wall like me.

Adding salt to the wound is the fact that while some applications are smart enough to detect if users have typed in the extension when saving, some are as clueless as its users. So now we have 2 problems: files without extension and files with double extensions. As if we don’t have enough problems in the world.

I’m speechless, my mind is blank, and I’m assessing which wall I should bang my head to.