On 09/01/2008, Michael Foord <fuzzyman@voidspace.org.uk> wrote:
Note today's Coding Horror blog entry: "Don't Pollute User Space"
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001032.html
Keep your dirty, filthy paws out of my personal user space!
:-) Absolutely [...]
If applications need to store shared files, that's what the \AppData and \Application Data folders are for.
Sentiments I agree with...
Yes, with the one proviso that Windows (XP, at least, maybe Vista is actually better in this regard) makes it extremely difficult for the user to manually do anything in these directories, so that I'd say this is only appropriate for fully application-maintained files. As far as I know, Windows lacks any really sensible place to store application configuration data which is meant to be user edited on occasion (e.g. rc/ini files, startup scripts, etc). That's often what I see ending up in %USERPROFILE% - even though as Christian points out, it's "officially" wrong. Paul.