Hello Larry !

UX is always a fascinating topic, and it's great to hear many opinions about it.

That said, while I agree with all of your points ... I am afraid that my own is being missed, again :D I am not saying that the shared *.ini design necessarily has to go (and I am in no position to request such a thing anyways !) - after all this is how MOI does things, and there are some benefits to it. And of course I do love it too when my custom tweaks and shortcuts are readily available after installing a new version of a software, as that is something that I 100% expect to happen (either manually by duplicating the file, or automatically with the app making the copy, or even, even though I am not a huge fan of it, with the way MOI does it). My point is just that in MOI, the error prevention measures around this design are lacking.

For instance a simple way of being proactive about it would be the following. It still wouldn't fully solve the issue of the unexpected surprise on startup ; but at least, any power user with hours of MOI under their belt would have come across this warning a few times during normal daily use, and this even without installing any beta or any new version - and therefore the user would have been "trained" in advance about it. As for the text : even though I agree that "less is more" in general, when it comes to keeping the data of the user safe the opposite is true : More is always best. For instance even though this popup comes from a button located in the "General" panel, it can still be used as an opportunity to warn about something related to the later "Shortcut Keys" panel.



As for what other applications do : well, this would be an argument from authority which could be countered easily by pointing out the way Blender and Unreal do things :D So I don't think it is really relevant.




And of course I understand that in the case of MOI, the best way to experiment with the beta without affecting the ini of a previous version is to do a backup of it. My whole point is that the application does not go out of its way to tell me anything about it. And even though some users may have guessed this, It is not reasonable to *expect* users to guess it beforehand. I certainly didn't realize it until yesterday.

Anyhow - at the end of the day I am just an Error Prevention Absolutist, and while I do understand that it is a bit of a strict position to hold, it is the one on the side of caution ! :D