At 6:52 AM +1300 on 3/11/06, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
That said, are Talkback reports much use without a URL (assuming one remembers the URL at the time, or even knows it)?
Yes, "generic" Talkback reports are still useful as a data point that gets aggregated, which lets us know where (in the code) users might be experiencing crashes that devs and nightly testers might not see, or by aggregating crashes that otherwise seem random.
The Talkback reports are just *more useful* with a URL and/or a little comment. Devs and QA monitor the Talkback reports on a fairly regular basis and file new bugs based on the Talkback reports ("topcrashers") and try to fix them. Since these are bugs we're not seeing ourselves in most cases, all the info helps.
As an example of how helpful the URL and comments can be, one of the topcrashers for 1.0b2 (and earlier) was a bug triggered when a window (usually a pop-up) containing a plugin was closed shortly after the plugin was initialized. We'd been staring at these Talkback reports for months (the original bug was filed based simply on the Talkback reports in 1.0b1 or even 0.9-ish) with no luck, but finally one night, based on a couple of sample URLs and some comments (even "bad" ones like "closing a window") in a few reports, Simon Fraser was able to finally reproduce the problem, debug it, and--as most of the crashes were related to Java applets rather than other plugins--help Steven Michaud fix the Java Embedding Plugin to stop doing things that triggered the bug. We got the fixed JEP in 1.0 and that crash almost never shows up in 1.0's Talkback any more.
WRT including URLs, if I don't remember the page off the bat, I simply reopen Camino and copy the URL out of History and into Talkback; I can usually tell which of the recent URLs was the one I was loading/viewing when I get that rare crash.
But why then limit Talkback's usefulness but allowing automatic feedback (without comment and URL from the user)?
It helps us as part of the aggregation, and many users would otherwise not send Talkback at all--at least that's my theory; I didn't design Talkback ;)
Unless it's a remarkably crash prone build, this shouldn't add too much extra effort on the part of the user.
Agreed. Still, an automatic Talkback report is better than none at all--but if one has the time, please do try to choose the manual route and add the URL and a brief comment.
Smokey -- Smokey Ardisson Graduate Student in Middle Eastern and African History Georgetown University [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.geocities.com/sardisson/ _______________________________________________ Camino mailing list [email protected] http://mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/camino
