User settings storage debate

[mikiem]

TO me the problem of installing any config data with the prog files is if/when the files are updated, backup restored, that sort of thing, user data can be lost. Shouldn't be a big problem, but alas with software problems occurring all too often, stuff gets deleted in the process of fixing it & that can be a minor pain.

Installing in one of the user folders (i.e. XP's Doc & Settings) can solve that, but there's usually too many location variables... And try to find some of this stuff in Vista. Like the start menu, file-type associations, and booting with Windows, total developer anarchy.

Using the registry works, but it's inaccessible to most users, and certainly can't be used as portably with a flash drive. Plus with Vista, the few Vista (vs XP) examples I've seen manhandled the registry in the most nasty ways.

If I had to design something I think I'd try the user folders with an option to sync them to a flash drive or similar so that the experience could be seamless regardless the hardware I was using, as long as the software was installed on that machine. That sort of setup could make everyone happy I'd think.

[wasker]

With the advent of Windows vista, microsoft is pushing users and developers to move from the age old idea of storing settings in the program's program files folder

-Josh (August 01, 2007, 09:39 AM)

Gosh, Microsoft was talking about proper places for storing data FOR YEARS. NT line had file access permissions very long time ago. In Windows 2000 (1999) the whole system was stabilized. And MSDN repeats over and over again: use user profile/documents folder to store per-user data and documents, maybe settings, use user's registry hive to store small portions of settings, use r/o all users profile to store common data. Let me emphasize: this was here for years. And you just noticed that? The reason behind that is separation different users' data plus easy roaming user support (this is when the app is being used in Active Directory environment).

I was using Windows XP under LUA. Sometimes it's such a pain to have application which doesn't follow the guidelines.

OK, about portability. The wish to make your app portable doesn't mean that you need to store everything in app's folder. Create another edition of the program and do what you want, but don't do this at the expense of users who don't need any portability.

[Darwin]

I'm all for apps leaving my registry alone and writing settings to an ini file. Great idea. Placing the .ini file in my user/application data/app name folder makes sense. Like others here, this idea appeals to me because it would make it that much easier to install apps to a thumbdrive and take them with me.

[mm5595]

One program that gives the option of storing setting either in the registry OR the program folder is Filezilla.  During install you're prompted to either (a) store settings in the registry or (b) store those setting as an .xml file.  I've always opted for the xml storage as I frequently set up Filezilla on mutiple computers and have a basic xml file I can transfer from machine to machine to quickly configure them.