A tale of two crashes

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:49 pm

The MS similarity is a problem I suspect. Not for me as I have disabled all the MS error report generating and sending, so I'd know it wasn't anything to do with MS.

Post by **randi** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:55 pm

I agree, it's probably too familiar-looking. But minidumps are binary data and cannot be simply copy-and-pasted, so there needs to be some other mechanism for reporting the error.

But Microsoft's dialog doesn't have a big pane for entering a description. Would adding, "This information will not be sent to Microsoft." help?

Enjay: Simply clicking each file in the top pane shows its contents in the bottom pane. Here's what the clicking the second file shows:

The report itself is a tar.gz archive, and these are the files packaged inside it.

Post by **Enjay** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:02 pm

randy wrote:Enjay: Simply clicking each file in the top pane shows its contents in the bottom pane.

Cool, well that makes it pretty transparent.

A message saying info will not be sent to MS may help assuage some fears. Especially if it was quite specific. I dunno, something like:

"This report has been generated by Zdoom and is not a Microsoft generated report. It will not be sent to Microsoft. It will only be sent to the author of Zdoom."

Mind you, does something like that then mean you cannot send it to someone else (legally) because you have said it was only being sent to you?

Heh, the only crashy type problems I have had with 2.0.96 recently have been total lock-ups anyway. So a crash report dialogue wouldn't even appear with them.

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:09 pm

I like whatever version helps you (Randy) out the most. In the end, you're the one who has to fix the bugs, so don't worry about what looks prettier to us.

Your Name Is · Post by **Your Name Is** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:29 pm

third design, flat out.

skadoomer · Post by **skadoomer** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:35 pm

So what will become of the bugs fourm then if the information can just be transported to randy?

Question: What if the computer dosn't have internet access? Can an error report file be generated so it can be e-mailed or something?

Post by **randi** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:44 pm

Well, I do have to worry if people are afraid this report is going to Microsoft. How does this redesign look?

YNI: Most bug reports are not crashes, so this has no effect on them. The forum is still necessary.

Darkon · Post by **Darkon** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 6:45 pm

maybe if you made it say something more entertaining and less microsoft...ish

such as

Zdoom has died, CPR will not work, so instead send a bug report and we can quickly dispose of the body

i actually think it looks quite effective, just use whatever suits you best

Sticky · Post by **Sticky** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:16 pm

The last screenshot is much better; the first ones just looked scary!
I like the way the current crash dialog makes it feel like we're sending you something directly. "With luck, this will provide me with enough information to fix the problem for future versions of Zdoom."

It's all in the first person singular! If it seems like we're sending one guy something, great. When there's an unnamed we ("We are sorry for the inconvenience"), it creeps us out a bit.

Mr. Tee · Post by **Mr. Tee** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:17 pm

HotWax wrote:I like whatever version helps you (Randy) out the most. In the end, you're the one who has to fix the bugs, so don't worry about what looks prettier to us.

I completely agree, I will use whatever ZDoom has got. If it's easier for you, then go for it!

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:25 pm

Sticky wrote:The last screenshot is much better; the first ones just looked scary!

Definitely. It gave me the willies only big corporations like Microsoft are capable of normally.

Post by **Chris** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 7:41 pm

Much sleeker, definitely. Only issues I have have already been brought up: who-is-it confusion (changing the inspecific "We" to things like "me", "Randy", or "ZDoom author(s)" will help.. anything to get away from the default "MS crash report" look and feel), what to do if the computer doesn't have internet access at the time of the crash (perhaps just save it to disk anyway with a popup saying that there was no connection and to please email the crash report to you), and that it'd keep us in the dark as to what's been reported already and the status of the bugs. So not only will you get tons of duplicate bug reports sent to you (where there'll be a lack of discussion and problem solving among us over, and no feedback as to the status of the bug; vexing, fixed, trying to figure out how to fix, community feedback on how it should be fixed, etc), you'll also get them in the bugs forum if some people still do that.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:07 pm

The 3rd one with the option to choose what to view (the crash or the dump or whatever) was definitely the best.

BTW Randy isn't there a way you could have both methods? Like maybe give the user an option to set it up to report whichever way the user wants....

Post by **randi** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:18 pm

That "third one" is what you get when you click the "click here" button on the main dialog.

As for the concerns that people wouldn't know what was reported already and might report a bunch of duplicates: Well, these are crash reports. How many people seeing them in the past have had any clue if the same thing was posted or not? Most people don't know how to interpret them in order to make that sort of decision.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:21 pm

Oh, umm by 3rd one I meant the one that has the whole "The Error Report Contains These Files:" thing....