5. The method of claim 1 , where the plurality of applications are associated with the file type by rules in a set of selection rules defining conditions for selecting an application to be used to open files.
5. The method of claim 1 , where the plurality of applications are associated with the file type by rules in a set of selection rules defining conditions for selecting an application to be used to open files. 6. The method of claim 5 , where the selection rules include one or more of user-defined preferences associating applications with file types or administrator preferences applicable to all users of the computing environment.