Apr 24, 2004 02:59 AM
2398 Views
(Updated Apr 27, 2004 06:07 PM)
Over the past 20 years, I've consistently come across meriads of poorly labeled files and folders.
This could be due to the fact that most computer users aren't aware of the negative implications of bad naming conventions. I attribute much of this problem to Microsoft for allowing spaces in their file naming convention for Windows.
Properly named files and folders provide high level understanding of the content within the file or folder without having to open the file or folder. It also allows for proper processing by applications that rely on file names, such as browsers that process web pages.
Good Naming Habits
1) Use dashes or underscores and never spaces. Why? Lots of reasons especially within the realm of the Internet. Universal Resource Locator specifications disallow spaces in addresses. Older browsers produced 404 errors before they started to insert%20 for spaces.
2) Use standard alpha-numeric characters, A-Z, a-z, 0-9, dash, underscore. Never use reserved characters such as the ampersand, percent, exclamation points. This is especially useful when working in Internet environments.
3) For versioning control, use either date or rev schemes such as 1.0.0(version 1), 1.0.1(first revision after version 1) conventions, e.g. my-file-1.0.0.txt or my-file-04-23-2004.txt
Renaming Tools
I suggest CKRename because it's free and packed with features such as wildcard search and replace allowing case changing, match and replacing, appending before, appending after, renaming file extensions.
I come across so many websites that have been crippled by poorly named images, page names.
