64058 - Uninformative dialog for bad network settings or unresponding server

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Tim Smith]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001231
BuildID:    20001231

When a site fails to respond, or network settings are incorrectly set up, the
user receives in uniformative dialog "(site name)cannot be found.  Check the
spelling and try again."


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type in a address in Mozilla that doesn't exist
2. Hit enter

Actual Results:  You receive the uniformative dialog "(site name)cannot be
found.  Check the spelling and try again"


Expected Results:  A much better dialog that would help out many newbies would
be "(Site name) failed to respond.  Possible reasons for this are: a mispelled
name, the site you are trying to contact does not exist, or your network or
modem settings are incorrect.  Check these and try again.

Bad dialog boxes = confused users = mad users = users who switch to IE

Comment 1

[timeless]

Do we want to switch from a dialog to an error page [ala ie]?

Asking gui features for comment first before we decide who owns this bug.

Comment 2

[timeless]

erm i meant design feedback.

Comment 3

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

If we use an error page rather than a dialog, this can be a duplicate of bug 
28586.

Comment 4

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the 
owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard 
work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

updating to new owner. sorry for the spam.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I think there'd be a big easy win with changing the error message. I suggest:

"(Site name) failed to respond. Possible reasons for this are: the site you are
trying to contact does not exist or is non-functional, you misspelled the name,
or your network/modem settings are incorrect. Check these and try again."

CCing darin so he can provide input, or CC other people.

Gerv

Comment 7

[Darin Fisher]

i agree... it would be sufficient to just expand on the text of the error dialog.

Comment 8

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Attachment: patch

Merry Christmas!

Comment 9

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 62682 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

looks good to me.  sr=darin, but try to find some UE person to also review
this.

Comment 10

[Darin Fisher]

cc'ing trudelle for UE advice.

Comment 11

[Peter Trudelle]

I agree with MPT, using the page like IE would allow us to provide more
information (including links), and allow the user to see that information while
they are trying to resolve the problem, which is after the current dialog has
been dismissed.  However, as Darrin et. al. imply, that would be a much larger
change, so we may need to settle for stopgap measures in the meantime.

As to the patch wording, I'd suggest minor changes, mostly to make the clauses
sound more like possibilities than a list of problems:

"Possible reasons for this are: The page you are looking for may not exist, the
site may be having technical problems, you may have misspelled the name, or your
network or modem settings might be incorrect. Please check these and try again."


cc'ing  some other folks who know this stuff better than I do.

Comment 12

[Alex Bishop]

I like Peter's wording but I think the last "might" should be "may" for 
consistency.

Comment 13

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Attachment: Peter's wording + Alex's suggestion

Comment 14

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Reassigning to me.

Comment 15

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Seeking r=.

Comment 16

[Gagan]

Wouldn't a "page not found" be covered by a 404? So I'd suggest changing that to -- 

dnsNotFound=%s could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: The site you
are looking for may not exist, or it may be having technical problems, its
address may have been misspelled, or your network or modem settings may be
incorrect. Please check these and try again.

I also suggest the passive change to "its address may have been misspelled" --
it's a little bit less accusing than the previous form.

Comment 17

[timeless]

address => location

Comment 18

[Jonas Jørgensen]

"It's *location* may have been misspelled?" That would make this one of the 
most user-UN-friendly error messages in the entire program! NO normal end user 
would understand it!

Mpt, please say something.

Comment 19

[Peter Trudelle]

Jonas, we are trying to consistently call it a location everywhere, we must
avoid unilaterally changing the wording in individual cases, *that* would be
confusing.

Comment 20

[Jonas Jørgensen]

I thought it was decided to use address instead of location everywhere? Come 
on, how many time have you heard a person ask "what's the location of that web 
site"? Everybody thinks of it as an "address", not a "location". And what about 
email addresses? Should we start calling them email locations as well??

Comment 21

[Alex Bishop]

> dnsNotFound=%s could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: The site you
> are looking for may not exist, or it may be having technical problems, its
> address may have been misspelled, or your network or modem settings may be
> incorrect. Please check these and try again.

The first "or" isn't necessary.

> I thought it was decided to use address instead of location everywhere? Come 
> on, how many time have you heard a person ask "what's the location of that web 
> site"? Everybody thinks of it as an "address", not a "location". And what about 
> email addresses? Should we start calling them email locations as well??

See discussion in bug 49543. I do agree that 'location' sounds silly in this
case. How about just 'name'. That would give:

dnsNotFound=%s could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: The site you
are looking for may not exist, it may be having technical problems, its name may
have been misspelled, or your network or modem settings may be incorrect. Please
check these and try again.

Comment 22

[timeless]

first of all, when we say 'misspelled' we don't really mean that, because we're 
really trying to describe typos. [mis-entered]

second of all, i'm merely objecting to gagan's use of address, at first read, 
attachment 63955 [details] [diff] [review] is fine by me.

However, i think i don't like most of these suggestions.  the error is for dns 
errors, right? 

+dnsNotFound=%s could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: The address 
you are looking for is at a site that does not exist, the site may be having 
technical problems, you may have mistyped the server name, or your network or 
modem settings may be incorrect. Please check these and try again.

We're also missing what should be a significant reason for dns failure: expired 
domains.  In practice this isn't a concern (according to the philadelphia 
inquirer domains that expire get pr0n-napped).

Comment 23

[timeless]

in this case i think whatever trudelle suggests will be good enough for me as 
he understands my concerns.

Comment 24

[Peter Trudelle]

I don't have any real problem with recent iterations, though I was hoping Jatin
(our doc writer) could eyeball it.

Comment 25

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Attachment: final patch (i hope)

This will change the text to:

[site name] could not be found. Possible reasons for this are: The site you are
looking for may not exist, it may be having technical problems, you may have
mistyped the server name, or your network or modem settings may be incorrect.
Please check these and try again.

It's "name", so we avoid the location vs. address conflict. I don't think we
need to mention expired domains since that falls kinda falls into the category
of not existing or having problems...

Comment 26

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Gagan, could you review? Thanks!

Comment 27

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Gagan?

Comment 28

[Gagan]

apologies for not getting to this earlier. 

1. You mistyped mistyped :-) there is no word like that. Consider using
"incorrectly typed" or even more appropriate "misspelled"

2. my comments about changing to passive voice still apply. Consider using "the
server name may have been misspelled" as opposed to "you may have mistyped the
server name"

Comment 29

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Attachment: this patch may have misspelled the server name

all right, all right.

Comment 30

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Uhm, Gagan?

Comment 31

[Gagan]

Comment on attachment 68601 [details] [diff] [review]
this patch may have misspelled the server name

r=gagan

Comment 32

[Jonas Jørgensen]

Gagan, could you check this in for me, please? I don't have CVS access.

Comment 33

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Sorry for the delay ...
(1) The message given in the patch is waaaay too long. An error message should
    be limited to two short sentences or one long sentence, not two short
    sentences *and* one long sentence. :-)
(2) It's a better use of the user's time to suggest solutions rather than
    *possible* causes, especially when you already have a definite (though more
    general) cause -- that the server was not found.
(3) There's no need to say `please' unless the user *must* put herself at
    considerable inconvenience, which is not the case here -- she could always
    go somewhere else instead.

\u201c%s\u201d could not be opened, because the server could not be found. 
Check that you are connected to the Internet and that the server name is 
spelled correctly, and try again later.

(Note that %s here is not the server name; it is the URI, possibly ellipsized.)

Comment 34

[Alex Bishop]

I like MPT's wording. But shouldn't it be:

\u201c%s\u201d could not be opened, because the server could not be found. 
Check that you are connected to the Internet and that the server name is 
spelled correctly, or try again later.

(Note the last conjunction is 'or' not 'and')?

Comment 35

[Jonas Jørgensen]

It looks like someone is working on bug 28586, so this bug is kinda pointless 
now, I guess...

Comment 36

[Jonas Jørgensen]

WONTFIX since it seems like bug 28586 will be fixed soon. This bug is worthless now.

Comment 37

[Jonas Jørgensen]

v