Smarter error messages in Firefox

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Browser Tips

Smarter error messages in Firefox - Today's Browser Tip

by Jordan Running Sep 9th 2005

This has probably happened to you: You've opened a dozen or so tabs in the background and then closed the page that linked to them when suddenly one of them flakes out and your train of thought is interrupted by an ugly pop-up error message. Worse still, the tab is now labelled "(Untitled)" and the URL you were trying to get to is long gone. This stupid behavior is fixed in Firefox 1.5, but if you're not running the beta you can get (almost) the same fix in your current version.

Here's what you do: Enter about:config into your address bar, right-click on the list that appears and choose New > Boolean. Enter the name "browser.xul.error_pages.enabled" and when the new option appears in the list double-click on it to set it to true. You might have to restart Firefox for this one to kick in, but when it does you'll be treated to descriptive error pages that don't pop up in your face or erase the URL you were trying to get to.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jonathan Harford said 2:16PM on 9-09-2005

I'm so glad this is getting fixed. I'm familiar with the hack, but the default behavior was inexcusable.

I hope 1.5 brings more improvements along these lines... better cookie/password managers would be wonderful.

Brian Pipa said 2:47PM on 9-09-2005

Great tip! Thanks! I just delicious'd this post!

brian
http://myvogonpoetry.com

Richard said 11:36AM on 9-12-2005

You can do this on versions of Firefox earlier than 1.5 but it's pretty buggy and you lose the URL.

Now all they need to do is clean up the presentation of those error pages...

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