title: How to get users to read error messages?
body: <p>If you program for a nontechnical audience, you find yourself at a high risk that users will not read your carefully worded and enlightening error messages, but just click on the first button available with a shrug of frustration.</p>
  
  <p>So, I'm wondering what good practices you can recommend to help users actually read your error message, instead of simply waiving it aside. Ideas I can think of would fall along the lines of:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Formatting of course help; maybe a simple, short message, with a "learn more" button that leads to the longer, more detailed error message</li>
  <li>Have all error messages link to some section of the user guide (somewhat difficult to achieve)</li>
  <li>Just don't issue error messages, simply refuse to perform the task (a somewhat "Apple" way of handling user input)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><em>Edit:</em> the audience I have in mind is a rather broad user base that doesn't use the software too often and is not captive (i.e., no in-house software or narrow community). A more generic form of this question was asked on <a href="http://slashdot.org/" rel="noreferrer">slashdot</a>, so you may want to <a href="http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/03/01/132219/How-Do-You-Get-Users-To-Read-Error-Messages" rel="noreferrer">check there</a> for some of the answers.</p>