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Bad Dog! No Biscuit! Posted at 08:39 AM - 03/27/09 in Programming by Dennis

Ever been to Woot?  I love Woot, especially when they have a Woot-Off.  To help me when a Woot-Off is underway, I use Wootalyzer to let me know when a new item comes up.

Now that you have the background, let me get to the point of the title.  Today, there is a Woot-Off going on, so I started up the Wootalyzer as usual.  It popped up a message telling me that an update was available, so like any good user I told it to download & install.  Here's where the problem happened.  After the update was finished, it opened up for me and lo and behold, all of my user settings were gone.  Evidently the developers have it wipe the preferences on update.

Bad Dog!  No Biscuit!

If you are a developer, keep this in mind.  Never, ever, ever change your users settings without asking!  This is something that (obviously) really gripes me.  The reason is that the user preferences are exactly that, the user's preferences, not the developer's.  I know, you have to make some defaults, so that when the program is first installed it doesn't crash in a blaze of glory.  You do not, however, need to reset those settings to the defaults when the program is upgraded.  It doesn't take that much more time to do it right, and it prevents a bad user experience.

This concludes today's soapbox visit.