Re: Strategy for naming support folder
Re: Strategy for naming support folder
- Subject: Re: Strategy for naming support folder
- From: Graham Cox <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:31:45 +1100
On 10 Oct 2008, at 6:06 pm, Kyle Sluder wrote:
You're going to be hardcoding the name of the folder anyway, whether
that hardcoding happens to be in the form of a string in your source
code or the CFBundleIdentifier in your Info.plist. Why needlessly
inconvenience the user when you derive no benefit?
There's an obvious programmer benefit: I can write code that works
correctly in any app I drop it into to read/write files in that folder
without having to go in and customise it to each app. However, I would
agree that programmer convenience should always take a back seat to
user convenience, so the question remains what's best for the user.
I personally almost never have to dig around in Application Support
folders. On the very rare occasions I've peeked in there it's not
always obvious where to look - for example the common hierarchy of
Company/App Name/Sub folders is particularly irritating for apps where
the company that produced it is not immediately known. How many people
recall that "Super Blogging App" was produced by "Back Shed
Enterprises", or that "Office" was a product from some outfit called
"Microsoft"? I mean, who? ;-) So a simple App name is easier to find,
but then the potential for name collisions may be higher.
The use of the bundle identifier means that the app name is visible at
the top level so it should be easier to fix on the right folder, but
the extra components eliminate collisions. Whether it exposes too much
geekery to the public? Maybe.
I do tend to agree that it's not a place users should be visiting
routinely, and the app itself should offer an interface where
necessary to manage its own stuff in there. As with prefs, odds are
that the only time a user will ever go in there is to fix a problem
with a damaged file, so there's no clear advantage to making it
different from the preferences situation that I can see. Why is anyone
poking around in there? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm interested in
knowing what people do visit that folder for).
cheers, Graham
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