964330 - Improve error message for bad tag

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Webmaker Graveyard :: Thimble, defect)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

* Create a new Thimble project
* Type <foo>
* Get error; open error explanation

Actual: "The < character here appears to be the beginning of a tag, but is not followed by a valid tag name. If you just want a < to appear on your Web page, try using &lt; instead. Or, see a list of HTML5 tags."

Expected: something which has less jargon, leads with the solution, and better addresses the common mistakes. So, if the error is of the form:

<hl>

(i.e. <, then immediately some alphabetic chars) then the error message should say:

"hl" is not a recognised name for an HTML tag. Did you mean "h1" [Use simple edit distance algorithm to known tag names]? Or see a list of all valid HTML tags.

If the < is followed by a space, e.g. "1 < 2", then it should say:

"If you want an actual "<" to appear on your Web page, you have to using "&lt;" instead, so the browser doesn't think you are starting a tag. Or, if you are trying to put a tag in here, see a list of all valid HTML tags."

Gerv

Comment 1

[Zulfa]

Hi Jon.
I want to take this bug as my first contribution to Mozilla, can you assign me to it? and as it is my first bug to fix, can you help me direct where to start.
Thanks

Comment 2

[Pomax]

hi Zulfa,

errors like these are generated by Slowparse in the thimble.webmaker.org/public/friendlycode/vendor/slowparse directory, with the error text living in the thimble.webmaker.org/locale/en_US/thimble-dialog-messages.json (and related) files. I don't know how much work it's going to be to get dynamic messages working, since slowparse was not designed to do dynamic messages; it sees an error, and simply drops the associated error message into the notification dialog.

Comment 3

[akshaytiwari.003]

Can i work on this?

Comment 4

[Jon Buckley [:jbuck]]

Yep, go ahead. Pomax listed the starting point in comment 2.

Comment 5

[Pomax]

Closing as part of an "old ticket review" triage, as this pertains to old Thimble (superseded by a new implementation)