199804 - Unprofessional error message when download fails

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, defect)

Description

[oded]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126

When a download fails for some specific reason (which I could not successfully
reproduce), an error message is displayed to the user. That error message says
that the download failed for some reason, adding the comforting phrase "Sorry
for that."
It looks somewhat unprofessional, much like a screen taken from the "Interface
Hall of Shame" website (e.g., "You shouldn't be seeing this, idiot.")
It should be quite easy to spot the exact location of this message by looking up
this string (or its i18n-ready equivalent) throughout the Mozilla code.

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
Mozilla should instead display a boring, professionally-phrased error message.

Comment 1

[Josh Birnbaum]

Was one of these the error message you saw?
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/embedding/components/webbrowserpersist/locale/en-US/nsWebBrowserPersist.properties

Comment 2

[oded]

Yeah, I probably misquoted the error message. Sorry about that..

Comment 3

[James Graham]

On the contary, the one time I actually remember seeing this error message, I
was struck by how much *better* it was than most error messages. If mozilla
really has no way of knowing why something went wrong (e.g. because the OS
returns a non-specific error code), I would rather have the application
apologise for being unhelpful rather than just say "An unknown error occured"
before failing - the approach that most programs take. The politeness seems in
contrast to the 'Hall of Shame' example you give, which is bad because it abuses
the user.

If, on the other hand, there is a way of more specifically determining the
problem, then obviously that information should be communicated in the error
message.

Comment 4

[Alex Bishop]

Marking NEW.

Comment 5

[Alex Bishop]

*** Bug 209835 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Josh Birnbaum]

*** Bug 254788 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Attachment: Patch

Comment 8

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Comment on attachment 155501 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

thank you!

Comment 9

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Comment on attachment 155501 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

simple patch to review, three words get removed.

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comment on attachment 155501 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

Sure.  sr=me

Comment 11

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

Has been checked in:
08/08/2004 14:12	timeless%mozdev.org 	mozilla/ embedding/ components/
webbrowserpersist/ locale/ en-US/ nsWebBrowserPersist.properties 	1.5 	2/2  	Bug
199804 Unprofessional error message when download fails
patch by mcsmurf%gmx.de r=biesi sr=bz