And lo on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:55:06 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> OK, what is the purpose of an error message?
>
> You *might* be tempted to say that it's meant to tell you that an error  
> has occurred. But actually, it's more than that. It's supposed to tell  
> you *what* error occurred! (Usually the fact that _something_ went wrong  
> is damn obvious.)

No no no, the priorities are as follows

1) Tell the user an error has occured
2) Tell the user what the system/programme is going to do regarding said  
error
3) Tell the user what the error actually is
4) Suggest a course of action that the user can take to solve it.

Trouble is everyone gets to around the second item then things get  
complicated and they turn to something else. Hence error messages telling  
you that msgscr32 has caused a fault in kernel32 at point 0000 FFFF... to  
which every general user will respond, but I'm not running any programmes  
called msgsvr32 or kernel are they viruses should I search for and delete  
them?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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