

Why Can't Error Messages Be Fun? - bdfh42
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001238.html

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Jebdm
"Chrome is a joy to use, and in my opinion at least, it's the first true
advance in web browser technology since the heady days of Internet Explorer
4.0."

Um... add-ons? XMLHttpRequest? User scripting/Greasemonkey? User stylesheets?
Built-in search bar? AwesomeBar? Ubiquity? Adblock? Popup blockers? True zoom?
Session saver? Tabs?

~~~
nx
Well, it's not the _first_ true advance, but it's got tab processes and the
Javascript engine (JIT compiler, I think it was) and some other new ideas.

~~~
Jebdm
Yeah, sure. I didn't mean to imply that Chrome didn't have some cool stuff.

I really hope this tab-as-process thing catches on, or at least become
something you can enable (right-click -> fork or something similar).

~~~
trickjarrett
It's the way the main browsers are going. Firefox is still wrestling with it,
as I understand it, because it adds more overhead for memory which is
obviously something they were already fighting with.

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bdfh42
Following on from yesterday's debate on the suggested banning "coding horror"
from HN here is a fun post that could get us all thinking about the very
thorny issue of communicating application problems to the user.

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GeneralMaximus
NetPositive, the default web browser on the BeOS, had great error messages.
Here: <http://www.8325.org/haiku/>

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sdfx
I really dislike these cutesy google-style error messages à la _"oops
something went wrong"_ and _"Aw, snap ..."_ \- Often, their information value
is zero: they don't explain to you how to solve the problem or what went wrong
(maybe with the exception of the frozen error message). When you are
frustrated because something isn't working these messages can get on your
nerves fast.

It's great if you can package the information in a funny way, but if you can't
I'd take function over form any time.

~~~
wyday
If they could "explain to you how to solve the problem or what went wrong"
then they wouldn't need to show a vague error message. They'd just fix the
problem.

~~~
verdant
Typically, though, if the browser could display some kind of information on
the nature of the error, this could give a savvy user something they could
type into a search engine or ask an intelligent question about on a forum,
which might help them fix whatever is causing their problem.

This might not apply as much to the web, where the problem is likely a
malfunctioning network connection, or a problem with the web server (or server
side code). But it could help where the user is having a problem trying to
accomplish something with an application which they will never be able to do
until they change something on their end, or attempt it a different way.

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ams6110
Cute/Fun error messages will IMO get annoying really fast once the novelty
wears off. Just like that clippy thing in MS Office.

~~~
peregrine
No really I've seen the errors probably twice using Chrome full time since its
release. And each time they disarm any anger I have and make me smile.

Write your software with so few bugs that its a joy to see them every time
they pop up and your doing something right.

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comatose_kid
One computer I owned did make them fun, although it still didn't lighten the
blow of having to reboot:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation>

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thwarted
Spending time to make your error messages interesting or fun or silly or
whatever is time spent doing something that shouldn't be shown. Oversized
pixelated graphics of freezing browser tabs says "our programmer created this
in three minutes", which is most likely the right amount of time, considering
the important thing about that kind of error reporting is the ability to let
the user recover and try again.

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Deestan
That only really works if your application crashes _very rarely_ to begin
with. Unfortunately, that excludes the stuff I'm working on.

I really like the "dead tab" icon, but if it showed up 5 times per day, I'd
grow to loathe it in a week.

