Brave Tech World

    A lot has been said about stupid dialog boxes, cryptic error messages, and obscure instructions on help files, but here is the list of two that I wish would just go away:

"Leave contents on the Clipboard for other applications?"

(there is also a variation on "you've copied a large amount of data into the clipboard bla bla bla")

    Let me put this way, I have 2GB of memory on my computer, but even if I had just 512MB, I *don't* care that the clipboard has a 1MB image on it. Heck, I don't care if it has a 10MB image.

"Folder XYZ doesn't exist. Are you sure you want to create?"

    This is in so many setups that it has to be something related to Windows Installer, InstallShield or some other setup generator. This question is stupid because if you are installing a new application *that is* the expected behavior. Heck, I'd like to be warned if the folder does exist, not the other way around.

    This is the same thing as saying "everything is correct and you have nothing to worry about, but are you sure you want to continue?"

     Software Developers: Stop asking stupid questions from your users. Ask the minimum amount necessary, and try to automatically address unexpected situations.

    E.g.: If the CD is not on the drive D:, try to enumerate all CD/DVD players on the computer and look at those, instead of automatically asking the user. C'mon, it is just a couple of lines of code to do that.