Don't send Nerd-O-Grams ... write helpful error dialogs

We've all seen them.  We've all scratched our heads at them.  Non-helpful error dialog boxes.  While the image at the left is fake, it certainly gets the point across.  Dialog boxes need to help users understand what the problem was and what they might be able to do to prevent the problem in the future.  While working with software developers I am always on their case about this.  Sure, users are baffled, but from a support standpoint a dialog box that is meaningless to users is very hard to remember.  I've received lots of e-mails that said "I got some XML error doing something ... can you help me?"  Yeah, you can see where that is going.

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Tags: software development