Dan Butler's
TNPC Newsletter

Chasing Your Tail with Windows File Associations

by Frederic Gordon

Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, got a good deal of publicity last week by charging at a U.S. Senate hearing that the latest version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player "broke" the latest beta of RealPlayer. Breaking the program, it turned out, was rearranging Windows file associations so that the Microsoft program would be the default for various multimedia file types instead of RealPlayer.

Well, duh!

Glaser either was taking advantage of the senators' lack of computer savvy (admittedly, not an especially difficult task), or he is about the only person in the entire computer industry who isn't aware of the "last man standing" approach to file defaults in software installation. This last possibility is highly unlikely as RealPlayer itself does much the same thing.

In Windows 95/98 this is a problem that goes beyond annoyances all the way up to outrages.

It has become SOP for software installation programs to make that program the default file association for whatever type of file it is that the program handles. And when the type of file is something like multimedia, graphics, or HTML -- file types which typically are used by multiple programs -- this practice is a serious pain in the you-know-what.

It never really occurred to me, when the new Windows Media Player was released, to do anything other than install it, then re- install Apple QuickTime, and then reinstall RealPlayer. (That sequence produces the file associations that I prefer.)

This wasn't such a problem in Windows 3.x. You just used the "File Associations" feature on the File Manager's File menu, or manually edited WIN.INI. But Windows 95/98, which assigns associations to the ever-mysterious Registry, defies simple solutions. You can go to "view/options/file types" in Explorer or My Computer, or manually edit the Registry. But either approach is fraught with peril, and usually requires much time, to say nothing of knowledge of DDE syntax.

So far, I have encountered only a handful of installation programs since the introduction of Windows 95 that have offered file association options. Netscape 4.0x, if you do a Custom installation, will let you determine what associations it will set up. (The automatic installation just goes ahead and makes Netscape your default browser.) CoolEdit 96, a sound file editor, leaves it up to you whether it will make itself the default for these file types, as does WinAmp, a sound file player. Both are shareware. You'll find CoolEdit 96 at:
http://www.syntrillium.com and WinAmp at:
http://www.winamp.com

The clear heroes on this score are WinZip (archiving) and PaintShop Pro 5.x (graphics). Both offer association options during setup and permit changes after installation from preferences dialogs within the programs. THIS should be standard industry practice.

Until then, computer users could really use a SIMPLE utility for managing file associations. Any ambitious programmers out there... go to it.