57591 - `unknown error.' alert is inexcusably bad

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 86556

(MailNews Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Build: 2000102008, Mac OS 9.0

While working in a browser window, I got an alert which looked like this.
+-------------------------------------------+
|:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
+-------------------------------------------+
|  .   unknown error.                       |
| /!\                                       |
| """                                       |
|                                ((  Ok  )) |
+-------------------------------------------+
However, when I dismissed the alert, everything in Mozilla continued as normal.

This is really, *really* bad. This is the sort of alert which screenshots get 
taken of, put up on Web sites for people to laugh at.

Specifically, the following things are wrong with it.

1.  The only reason I know this alert was the fault of the mailer (rather than
    the browser, which I was using at the time) is because I did an LXR search
    (nsMsgProtocol.cpp is the only place which has `unknown error' with a
    lower-case `u' and a trailing `.'). There is no indication in the alert
    itself as to what part of Mozilla had an error.

2.  The alert has no title.

3.  The alert uses a caution icon, which is wrong since it is not asking the user
    for confirmation of anything.

4.  The error message doesn't use sentence capitalization.

5.  The error message doesn't tell me what the program was trying to do when the
    error occurred.

6.  The error message doesn't tell me what I can do to avoid/correct the error.

To fix those problems, the following needs to happen.

A.  The alert should have `Error' as its title.

B.  The alert should use an error icon, not a caution icon.

C.  The error text should be:
    |
    | {mailer name} could not {action} because {reason}.
    |
    | If the problem persists, try restarting {mailer name}.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** Bug 58362 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 57057 ***

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This isn't a dup. Bug 57057 is about the alert appearing when it shouldn't. This 
bug is about the alert having a poor UI even when it *is* supposed to appear.

Comment 4

[Daniel.Lemire]

In my case, I cannot check my mail from behind a SOCKS5 firewall with Linux.
This has been going on from the days of Mozilla. I am unable to provide any more
valuable information because there is no info in the damn dialog box! Come on
people! Help yourself and put so info in there so we can help you!

Comment 5

[Henrik Gemal]

This alert is driving me crazy.
It must be something with the auto checking of new messages or some. Because 
Mozilla just shows me the alert without me doing anything. I've just started 
Mozilla. I've tried various logging but with no luck!

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Henrik, that's bug 57057.

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

stephend could probably produce a patch for (4), (5), and (6) (and maybe even 
(3)) ...

I made a mistake in (2) in my original report: alerts should not have titles, 
except on Windows where the title should be the name of the app to match Windows 
UI guidelines. (Such a title would be automatically added by XP Toolkit to the 
Windows version of <alert>, when it is implemented.)

Comment 8

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Okay, patch is coming, but unfortunately it only addresses issue item # 4.

For # 2: We can probably use window.Title(app.Name) or something like that to
get the appname for both Mozilla and Netscape.  

For # 3: I don't know how to specify a different icon (I'm sure it's easy though.)

For # 5: Here in this code (nsMsgProtocol.cpp) we use some JS switch code. 
We've got reasons for other errors and we throw the correct dialogs there.  So,
I'm not sure what we should throw here. (We need better error trapping.)

For #6: See #5, if I don't know how to parse the error, I can't tell the user
how to avoid it.  

Comment 9

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: Patch, changes casing.

Comment 10

[timeless]

nsAutoString alertMsg; alertMsg.AssignWithConversion("Unknown error ");
bad bad bad [and not kerz's fault].
first cleanup: .Assign(NS_LITERAL_STRING("Unknown error "));
second: replace this with a properties lookup.

Comment 11

[timeless]

erm right, certainly not kerz's fault, but also not stephend's. *sigh, long 
day*

Comment 12

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

A new patch will be needed anyway, since people in bug 57057 have changed this 
code to add the error number to the end of the message. But they haven't fixed 
the casing, or the punctuation, or the grammar ...

While we don't have a map of error numbers to error reasons, preferred format for 
the text would be:

&mailerName; could not complete that command, because an error of type %1 
occurred. If the problem persists, try restarting &suiteName;.

hwaara, could you help here?

Comment 13

[Jesse Ruderman]

Bug 75713 is mac-specific and applies to all simple dialogs, whereas this bug 
only applies to one dialog but on all operating systems.  I don't think this 
bug should depend on 75713.

Comment 14

[Scott MacGregor]

cleaning up nsbranch keywords. triaging for the next release.

Comment 15

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

you should not see this dialog anymore.

we only show you an alert if we know what it is.

dup of bug #86556

if there are other issues, feel free to reopen and morph, or log a new bug.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 86556 ***

Comment 16

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

verified dup (I haven't seen this since in an opt build).