Improve file type handling on Windows

[core-ai-bot]

Issue by treslumen Saturday Mar 22, 2014 at 16:32 GMT Originally opened as https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/7296

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Related to #6073

Is it possible to add a manage module in the Preferences UI to toggle file type association for all the file types that Brackets tries to handle (w/ "Deselect all")?

Of course, there should also be a check box in the installer asking users if Brackets should register as handlers in the first place.

And I agree that Brackets shouldn't be automatically registered to handle non-web files like .ini, .config, etc. Users can manually choose Brackets to handle any file type they want via the OS but Brackets itself shouldn't offer to.

Another UI issue is that using the same Brackets app icon for its (one and only) file type icon is far from helpful, it doesn't visually distinguish between different file types (which is largely the whole point of having icons), and can even give the impression that those text files appear to be executable / app files. Just a graphics issue though.

Finally I can "testify" that on my Win7 x64, Brackets (pretty sure it was Sprint 34) didn't take over file types that were already properly handled by an existing app, for instance, it didn't take over .html files. However, as many of you pointed out in #6073 , for those text file types that don't have any handler yet, simply adding Brackets to the "Open with" list will cause the "take-over", including change of the icons.

So my requests are:

1. Make file type association configurable (both pre- and post- installation).
2. Limit the types that Brackets offer to handle to those only related to web programming.
3. Make distinguishable (yet subtle) icons for different file types, otherwise, don't change icons at all. Alternatively, if you don't have the resources to design Brackets-unique icons (well, Adobe aren't short of designers), then simply allow users to specify icons on their own for each file type.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by peterflynn Monday Mar 24, 2014 at 19:49 GMT

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Reviewed - marked 'move to backlog.'

The configuration UI is covered by user story https://trello.com/c/We4UGlRO/1026-menu-item-for-set-default-editor

We haven't before considered removing some languages from the list of things we register for Open With. It seems like a bit of an edge case - a user who cares about the file associations for, say, Java but doesn't want to use Brackets for it will probably have some other app installed that owns the file association already (and Brackets won't change that association). It seems uncommon to care about file associations that you don't have any app installed for. It would be easier to shorten our Open With support list if we implemented an option for a global right-click > Open With Brackets command in Explorer, as some other editors like Sublime offer. But at any rate, all that stuff is essentially tracked by #6073.

The idea about having different icons for different file types is a good one though. I'm not sure we can control that merely with out Open With registration -- choosing the icon might require fully taking over the file association (@bchintx, any idea?)... But at any rate, seems worth investigating at some point.

[core-ai-bot]

Comment by PhiLhoSoft Thursday Sep 18, 2014 at 09:06 GMT

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I disagree with "It seems uncommon to care about file associations that you don't have any app installed for".

First, I dislike that an installer does things without first asking the user, like not asking an installation path, putting itself in the start menu or on the desktop (some app does that and I have to remove the icons on each update!) or, here, forcefully associating itself to some file types.
At least, apparently, it doesn't hijack existing associations.
But I still think some dialog to choose the file associations, like those we see in IrfanView or 7-Zip, would be a courtesy to the user.

I want to have choice. I want to force some associations, why not, do disable others, and to be able to revert them all (perhaps Brackets should keep track of the original associations when asked to override them).

And, indeed, a good solution is to set up Brackets to add an "Open with Brackets" menu entry in all file context menus. I did that for my favorite editor, with the following reg settings:

; Register SciTE in the list of known applications.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\SciTE.exe]
"Path"="C:\\PrgWin\\Text\\SciTE"
`@`="C:\\PrgWin\\Text\\SciTE\\SciTE.exe"

; For the PerceivedType=text setting...
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\text\shell\edit\command]
`@`="\"C:\\PrgWin\\Text\\SciTE\\SciTE.exe\" \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\text\shell\open\command]
`@`="\"C:\\PrgWin\\Text\\SciTE\\SciTE.exe\" \"%1\""

; To put SciTE in the OpenWithList context menu item...
;~ [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\OpenWithList\SciTE.exe]

;~ [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\text\OpenWithList\SciTE.exe]

;~ [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\OpenWithList\SciTE.exe]

; Associate SciTE to any file.
; You can double-click on files without defined open or edit verb, they will open in SciTE
;  (actually no longer works in WinXP, but at least you have the entry in the context menu).
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\SciTE]
`@`="Edit with &SciTE"

HTH.