Don't display 'Error Opening File' modal when user clicks on binary file

[timcroydon]

At present (release 38), when user clicks on a binary file a modal dialog pops up saying 'Error Opening File'.

Use case

I quite often find myself clicking through a list of files to view the contents quickly, particularly if browsing someone else's code. If I encounter a binary file, I have to digest and acknowledge the error dialog before I can open another file. I find this annoying as it's not really an error as such.

Proposed alternative

I think a better approach would be just to show a simple readonly message in the file editor area, similar to the 'Code The Web' logo display that opens on loading the application, e.g. 'Cannot display file' or 'File type not supported'

[peterflynn]

We're doing work this sprint to make the Windows behavior more consistent with Mac, but that won't address this -- it'll just mean we consistently show the error dialog on both platforms. Marking 'move to backlog' for us to consider the enhancement of showing UI that's nicer than an error dialog.

[TomMalbran]

I was thinking that as first approach an easy solution would be to create a Custom Viewer for the binary file that would just show the file metadata, maybe a general file icon and maybe a simple message stating that this is a binary file. Since we are extending that list a lot lately, it will cover most of the most common binary files.

[peterflynn]

Closing since duplicate bug #7676 has more info in its thread