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Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file
(I don't plan on doing lots more of these Windows UI blog posts. I just came across this and found it interesting. Besides, it's super hot where I live and I can't do anything meaningful anyway, so here we go.)
Let's open the file manager and click on a file that is not a .EXE or something known to the system like .TXT . What happens?
I don't have access to each and every version of Windows under the sun, only to a few of them. Let's have a look at those.
I also translated some of the German labels into English, but it's quite possible that these buttons are called a little differently in the original English versions.
In Windows 386/2.11 (1989), you just get a "nope" (translation of the image: "ABC.OMG is not executable"):
This version of Windows already had the concept of "open file type $foo with program $bar ", but apparently there was no UI to configure this. Or I couldn't find it. You could set up the associations in WIN.INI :
Windows 3.1 (1992) improved the situation a little bit:
It still just tells you "no", but it now also tells you that there is a concept of file type associations and where to configure them. This gets you to a basic but functional dialog window:
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