Table of File-Types

Graphics and illustration

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
Windows Bitmap	.bmp	Stores information about a picture pixel by pixel in an uncompressed format	Can be opened in many graphics applications but very expensive on memory – not suitable for internet use.
Windows Metafile Format	.wmf	Microsoft graphic format. WMF files can hold both vector and bit-mapped images.	XaraX is a good program to edit this file type if you don't have Microsoft tools.
Graphic Interchange Format	.gif	A compressed bit-mapped graphics file format used by the Internet using ‘lossless’ compression. Note: Unisys owns GIF format, and companies that use the algorithm are supposed to license its use.	Limited to 256 colours so most effective for line drawings rather than colour photos. Background colours can be made transparent and with an animation editor, GIF images can be put together for animated sequences.
Joint Photographic Expert Group	.jpg or .jpeg	JPG is one of the image file formats supported on the Web. It is compressed using a ‘lossy’ technique so some detail is sacrificed.	JPG images support 16 million colours and are best suited for photographs and complex graphics. JPG does not work well on line drawings, lettering or simple graphics
Portable Network Graphics	.png	A graphics Internet and developed as a patent-free answer to the GIF format. PNG uses ‘lossless’ compression techniques	PNG allows control of the degree of transparency, known as opacity. Saving, restoring and re-saving a PNG image will not degrade its quality but PNG does not support animation like GIF does.
Tagged Image File Format	.tiff	TIFF graphics can be any resolution, and they can be black and white, grey-scaled, or colour	One of the most widely supported file formats for storing bit-mapped images (e.g. used in PageMaker and CorelDraw)
ZsoftPaintbrush	.pcx	Originally developed for PC Paintbrush, PCX is a graphics file format for graphics programs running on PCs.	PCX is supported by most optical scanners, fax programs, desktop publishing systems and applications such as PC Paintbrush.
Data Exchange Format	.dxf	A two-dimensional graphics file format originally created by for the AutoCAD system.	Supported by virtually all PC -based CAD products (e.g. can be imported into TechSoft Designer).
Acorn Draw	.aff	The file format used by the Acorn Draw program.	Can be imported into TechSoft Designer and XaraX.

Multi-media

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
MS PowerPoint	.ppt	Used for creating slides and overhead presentations. Note: This file type can become infected.	Can be opened in most versions of MS PowerPoint but some difficulties with images between different age versions. Stores images at original full size, which can result in over-large files.
Macromedia Flash	.swf	Macromedia Flash integrates video, text, audio, and graphics. Although proprietary, it is estimated now to be present more than 97% of Internet-enabled desktops.	Flash files are an increasingly common means of providing high quality animation effects over the Internet.
Musical Instrument Digital Interface	.mid	A MIDI representation of a sound includes values for the note's pitch, length, and volume. It can also include additional characteristics, such as attack and delay time.	The MIDI standard is supported by most synthesizers, so sounds created on one synthesizer can be played and manipulated on another synthesizer. Computers that have a MIDI interface can record sounds created by a synthesizer and then manipulate the data to produce new sounds.
Motion Picture Expert Group	.mpg or .mpeg	There are three major MPEG standards: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. MPEG uses a type of ‘lossy’ compression, since some data is removed. But the diminishment of data is generally imperceptible to the human eye.	MPEG generally produces better-quality video than competing formats, such as Video for Windows and QuickTime. MPEG files can be decoded by special hardware or by software.
Apple Quick Time Video Clip	.mov	Apple QuickTime is a popular format for news, entertainment, movie trailers and virtual reality (VR) on the Internet.	Use QuickTime to view news, entertainment, movie trailers and virtual reality content on the Internet. Digital cameras use QuickTime to capture audio and video clips.
Waveform audio file	.wav	The format for storing sound in files developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM, it has become a standard for sound on PCs.	WAV sound files can be played by nearly all Windows applications that support sound.
Audio video interleave	.avi	The file format for Microsoft's Video for Windows standard. AVI files are limited to 320 x 240 resolution, and 30 frames per second, neither of which is adequate for full-screen, full-motion video but it does not require any special hardware	Several programs capture this file extension including QuickTime and RealPlayer (available for the Mac). Recent files might be compressed with one the available codecs (i.e. compression standards).

Text and documents

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
Text file	.txt	A true text file will be pure ASCII text with no formatting.	Can be opened in Notepad, WordPad, or any other program designated as a text editors. Useful also to examine the content of other file types if required.
MS Word	.doc	The proprietary document format created by MS Word. Note: This file type can become infected.	Can be read by most versions of MS Word but there can be some difficulties with included graphics when transferring across different aged versions. Can also be read by OpenOffice and LibreOffice
Rich Text Format	.rtf	A MS file type to specify the format of documents. Essentially an ASCII file with commands to indicate formatting information (e.g. fonts). Note: This file type can become infected.	Often a system will be set so Word opens when an RTF file is encountered but RTF files can be transferred across most text based applications.
MS Publisher	.pub	The proprietary publication format created by MS Publisher	Restricted transferability limited to specific versions of MS Publisher (but now supported by LibreOffice)
MS Word (XML)	.docx	XML-based document format now used in current versions of MS Office.	Cannot easily be read by earlier versions of MS Office.
Adobe Portable Document File	.pdf	Captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications.	Use to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's monitor or printer as they were intended. To view you need Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems.
Open Document Format	.odf	An XML-based file format for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.	Based on the Sun Microsystems specification for OpenOffice.org XML, (the default format for OpenOffice.org,) which had been specifically intended "to provide an open standard for office documents

The Internet

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
Hypertext Mark-up	.htm or .html	Hypertext documents are used as the basis of most web pages	Can be opened in any web browser and edited in any word-processor or text editor
Extensible Markup Language	.xml	A specification developed by the W3C and designed especially for Web documents	XML should become the definitive file format used for web page design.
Scalable Vector Graphics	.svg	A vector graphics file format that enables two-dimensional images to be displayed in XML pages on the Internet.	SVG images are scalable to the size of the viewing window and will adjust in size and resolution according to the window in which it is displayed.

Database and spreadsheets

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
Comma-separated Values	.csv	Also known as a comma-delimited format for data representation. It is a database exported into a format where each record is a single line and each field in the record is indicated by a comma.	Often associated with MS Excel but can usually be imported into almost any database or spreadsheet. CSV is one of the standard ways to transfer data into and out of a spreadsheet.
MS Excel	.xls	The proprietary spreadsheet format created by MS Excel (now superseded by the xlsx format) Note: This file type can become infected.	Used in MS Excel and can also be captured by the OpenOffice Suite and LibreOffice
MS Access Databases	.mdb	The proprietary format used to exchange data between MS Access databases Note: This file type can become infected.	Use restricted to MS Access database but can also be read by OpenOffice and LibreOffice

Back up and archive

Name	.ext	Description/Characteristics	Properties/Applications
WinZip file	.zip	A compressed archive that may contain one file or many files in multiple directories.	Use programs such as WinZip or the free download 7 Zip to reduce the size of uncompressed files before emailing them as attachments
Tape Archive File	.tar	A series of back up files strung together as a single uncompressed file.	Most programs that will handle .ZIP or other archive formats will also handle .TAR files. Can be compressed to create files with tar.gz or tar.Z extensions

Note: File-type extensions should always be in lower case.

DT Online Buyers' Guide

Single Core processors are hardly ever available these days and Dual Core quite adequate (unless required for gaming and video editing etc.) but Quad Core would be better especially in view of the high graphics content likely to be needed for Design and Technology use.
Generally, the more expensive and newer processors and faster and more power efficient (although faster will almost always mean shorter battery life). Intel Core i5 and AMD Series-A8 processors or better are first choice but older Pentium or less expensive Celeron may be OK if only basic use is envisaged and speed is not a critical factor but cost is an issue.
Laptops for Design and Technology should have at least 4Gb of RAM (preferably 8Gb), 500Gb (preferably 1Tb) Hard Drive (but SSD is better), screen resolution of no less than 1600 × 900 pixels and Dedicated Graphics Card in addition to the usual network connections.