[mikehawkins]

I agree... especially with the comment about terse and unclear error messages. I recently got lured into the customer-facing side of things, and nothing annoys me (or our new users) than a message like "Incorrect syntax" when I used a unsupported symbol for my password.

First, be clear with your design and instructions. In my hasty password example - "Please create your password (6 or more characters, letters and numbers only)"

Then - if the user messes up, explain a bit... "Whoops, please only use letters and numbers"

So, so much nicer. :)

</rant>