Useless Error Messages in Nautilus · patrick dot wagstrom dot net

Here’s a prime example of what happens when programmers write error messages:

This is an error that was repeated several times for different files when I was copying over some newly ripped CDs from my laptop to my MythTV box. Unfortunately, there are several things wrong with this error dialog that make it useless:

I can’t see the complete filename, nor can I expand the box to make the complete filename visible. In this case I could make out where it was having problems, but if I had a common naming structure for files across many directories, I would not be able to tell where it was having problems.
“Access Denied” is a very vague term. Is it access denied on the source or the destination? Other one of which can cause such a problem. In this case the problem was a lack of write permissions for the destination directory on the server, but it does not make it clear that if its a problem with reading the file or writing the file.
Lastly, it does not make a distinction if this is a file or a directory that it’s having problems with. In this case it was a directory, but given how Windows and Mac folks are lazy about file extensions, that may not always be so obvious.

It’s funny, it seems like an error dialog is such a simple little thing, but making one not work correctly can be big problems. Chalk this up to another “it’s shouldn’t be so difficult”.