Where Did “Open With” Go?
Living at the bleeding (well, leading) edge of open source development can be quite disconcerting as a desktop user. For example, in some recent nautilus upgrade, the “open with” option for folders just disappeared. I used this to queue up folders of music in xmms. Moreover, the “open with application…” option for files no longer gives a nice dialogue where you can define applications for file extensions (or specific files)—now it just prompts for a command to run. Where did it all go?
I think my blog has been too “consumer protection” focused lately—see my recent entries on WLI Reservation Rewards (now up to 25 comments!) and U-Haul for example. I’m afraid I’m becoming a one trick pony, so I’m going to limit my consumer complaints for a while, even though I’ve got a nice one stewing about Verizon. Steve says I’m actually a three trick pony: Linux, IP law, and consumer scams. Maybe he’s right.
Matthew Good Jan 28
Open With is in the properties dialog now, though it’s not the same as before. As far as I know, there’s no longer a central place to go to configure the mime settings like there used to be. I think for Gnome 2.8 they redid the whole mime-type system, so as a result the old dialogs were no longer useful. The thing that I’m still looking for is the URL handler configuration.
Adam Rosi-Kessel Jan 28
I see the Open With configuration dialog. But there’s still no way to actually invoke “Open With” for a folder–or am I missing something else?
Ari Pollak Jan 28
I just drag the folders & files I want to hear right into the XMMS playlist.
EdCrypt Jan 28
I read somewhere that the mime changed again. I think that it’s just the UI that will be better in 2.10, i’m not sure if its true.
Sven Arvidsson Jan 28
Open with is no longer available for folders, see bug 151747 in GNOME Bugzilla.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151747
(Still hoping for this feature to be revived!)
Tamara Jan 28
I was hoping the “open with” dialog would be fixed up and I threw together a few sketches which would clean up the 2.6 approach. However, I guess it was just assumed that anyone who was using the “open with” dialog would be smart enough to know the name of the command they wanted.
But I do like it better (I don’t know about “end-users” though). My gf seems to find her way around it (but she rarely needs it).