Help Yourself

The real need with respect to user help ("Self-Help Software to the Rescue," October 1996 Bits) isn't for on-line databases of answers to frequently asked questions. Nor is it for software to automatically fix bugs. Many of us can fix problems with wrong file types, application clashes, and missing or replaced DLLs. All we need are decent error messages. Message boxes that tell me an error has occurred and ask me to click OK are not OK. Message boxes that present an error code with nowhere to look up that code are just bits blowing in the wind. I wouldn't mind giving disk space to application bloat if it was spent on decent error messages that allowed me to diagnose and fix the problems on my machine.

Glenn P. Davies
gdavies1@ent.agt.ab.ca