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January 08, 2004

Desired Results


I've got a weird habit when I'm reading web pages. I tend to click-select text up and down the page while I'm reading. It's a nervous, fidgety thing I do. Sometimes, when I'm using Mozilla or one of its derivatives, the selection eventually becomes "stuck," and I have to close the window to de-highlight the highlighted text. In NewzCrawler, my Windows RSS reader, it causes the following dialogue to pop up if I do it long enough:


(click)

So, according to the dialogue, I can either "debug," "send error report," or "don't send." It's a choice I face at least two or three times a day.

If I click "don't send." the program window remains open for a bit, then it closes, but the tray icon remains, which I have to right-click to close. It takes about five seconds from crash to exit. If I click "send error report," I have to go through the whole rigamarole to tell Microsoft what went wrong. I think I did it once just to be a good citizen. I don't anymore. It never occurred to me to click "debug," because I wouldn't be able to make sense of the results anyhow.

It's frustrating that my fidgeting makes the program crash, and I've really come to hate the long pause between clicking "don't send," waiting for the program to die, then mousing over the tray icon to really exit the crashed program.

Today I accidentally clicked "debug." The program exited instantly and cleanly. No tray clicking! I deliberately fidget-crashed the program three more times just to make sure my new workaround really works. Sure enough, every time: click debug, no right-click of the system tray.

Don't ever let anyone tell you Windows doesn't encourage people to explore their computers.

Posted by mph at January 8, 2004 02:09 AM

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