• (cs) in reply to RiX0R
    RiX0R:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    That's just a fun way for a Star Trek-loving programmer to say "something got screwed with you undo/redo history and if you perform this edit, anything could happen".

    The only thing that's missing from this dialog is the question "Really perform the relocate? [Yes] [No]". The rest of the blurb is actually fairly useful because it warns you of bad stuff that might happen that otherwise you probably wouldn't have known about. I didn't know that relocates could be that harmful though -- if you relocate to the wrong URL, nothing stops you from relocating back, so the message might be a little overreacting.

    Zakhooi :D.

     

    *insert obligatory Yoda joke here*

    In Soviet Russia, Info Not Got YOU!

  • (cs) in reply to plizak
    Anonymous:

    True....

     

    Also, I showed this to a coworker (not to be confused with a cow worker), and he said his favourite error message is the one when you boot up a computer and have no computer...

    "No keyboard found, please press F1 to continue."

     

    [^o)]

    The one where you boot up a computer and have no computer? That's today's stroke of brillance!

  • (cs) in reply to Bus Raker

    Bus Raker:
    not first

    The real WTF is that no one gave me shit for this post.  Where's the love?

  • ss (unregistered) in reply to RiX0R
    RiX0R:

    Zakhooi :D.

     

    ??????? :-)

  • andrey (unregistered) in reply to masklinn
    masklinn:

    the Very Stupid Thing about the Tortoise dialog, though, is that it comes after you've asked for a relocation and entered the new location of your repository.

    This means that if you pick the "wrong" choice then you're kinda fucked: if you click Yes (as the implied question is "Do you want to relocate?" indeed) the relocation starts immediately.

    In fact, would they so much as swap the dialogs (first this one then asking for the new location) the workflow would become much more interresting and this message would actually be useful. They could swap it to a regular alert message too, since you'd have the ability to pick whether you'll really relocate or not right at the next dialog.



    But wouldn't the main process start only after the confirmation?  This dialog is probably one of those 'this is your last chance to cancel the operation' boxes.  Still, I'd take a verbose dialog like this one over terse "Are you sure you want to relocate?" any day.
  • (cs) in reply to andrey
    Anonymous:
    masklinn:

    the Very Stupid Thing about the Tortoise dialog, though, is that it comes after you've asked for a relocation and entered the new location of your repository.

    This means that if you pick the "wrong" choice then you're kinda fucked: if you click Yes (as the implied question is "Do you want to relocate?" indeed) the relocation starts immediately.

    In fact, would they so much as swap the dialogs (first this one then asking for the new location) the workflow would become much more interresting and this message would actually be useful. They could swap it to a regular alert message too, since you'd have the ability to pick whether you'll really relocate or not right at the next dialog.



    But wouldn't the main process start only after the confirmation?  This dialog is probably one of those 'this is your last chance to cancel the operation' boxes.  Still, I'd take a verbose dialog like this one over terse "Are you sure you want to relocate?" any day.


    If the dialog used OK/Cancel buttons, it'd be good as-is.  It's as simple as changing the options to the dialog box in Win32 to MB_OKCANCEL | MB_ICONWARNING
  • (cs) in reply to BiggBru

    If the readers of this forum wrote error-popup-dialogs for the programmers whose code is featured in this forum...

    [image]

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:


    wtf is a paradoxon?
    is it a cross between a paradox and a moron?
  • Barney (unregistered) in reply to makomk
    makomk:
    chrismcb:
    makomk:
    RiX0R:

    The only thing that's missing from this dialog is the question "Really perform the relocate? [Yes] [No]". The rest of the blurb is actually fairly useful because it warns you of bad stuff that might happen that otherwise you probably wouldn't have known about. I didn't know that relocates could be that harmful though -- if you relocate to the wrong URL, nothing stops you from relocating back, so the message might be a little overreacting.

    Yep - the error message looks to be fairly accurate, though it requires a bit of knowledge of the terminology to understand fully. IIRC, svn switch --relocate, which is the command-line equivalent of this, just changes the repository URL (so it'd better be the same repository, or interesting things could happen), whereas ordinary svn switch is basically like svn up, but changes branches at the same time.

     

    This is an error message? I thought it was a quiz.

     

    I HATE dialogs that have buttons that don't match possible answers, or even worse don't have a question at all.

    s/error message/warning/, but yes it is one - however much it may look like an ESP test.


    I just couldn't pass up an apportunity to bury this quote one more level - WTF ???

  • (cs) in reply to danielpitts

    I'm new to this posting malarkey, so I fully expect the forum software to fail on me and make me look like an idiot...

    But...

    The real WTF is the people who start their posts with the words "The Real WTF is..."

    Is it only me that gets annoyed by that? Even if the stuff they point out is valid, the "real WTF" is the one posted at the start of the thread. I vote that all such comments should at least begin "The secondary WTF, in support of the real WTF (which is what this thread is about) is..."

    Maybe I'm being anal. Maybe The Real WTF is that people like me reply to these threads. Who knows.

    Also: First!

    (not really)

  • Cthulhon (unregistered) in reply to Barney

    The SVN one doesn't really seem bad enough to be called a WTF. The question is rather implicit; I can't imagine a single naturally worded question where 'yes' would cancel the operation.  You can't really make a case for confusing a non-technical person as SVN is meant for coders.  It's a minor bug, not really worth noting except on the product's bug tracker.

  • Tired of TRWI (unregistered) in reply to ElectroDruid
    ElectroDruid:
    I'm new to this posting malarkey, so I fully expect the forum software to fail on me and make me look like an idiot...

    But...The real WTF is the people who start their posts with the words "The Real WTF is..."

    Is it only me that gets annoyed by that? Even if the stuff they point out is valid, the "real WTF" is the one posted at the start of the thread. I vote that all such comments should at least begin "The secondary WTF, in support of the real WTF (which is what this thread is about) is..."

    Maybe I'm being anal. Maybe The Real WTF is that people like me reply to these threads. Who knows.

    Also: First!(not really)

    Whether you're being faceitous or not, I must say that I would forgive all the stupidity of this software: the usually nonworking CAPTCHA, the almost-never-works quoting, etc if somehow this software could smack people upside the head EVERYTIME somebody posted that insipid, overused, cliche phrase.

    The problem with this is the resulting "wrongful death" lawsuits from the families of people who would not get why it's happening and die from concussions of all the smacks upside the head as they wonder why their "real WTF" posts keep not getting posted yet they keep waking up with a bruise on their head...

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to xrT
    xrT:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Bárður H. Joensen was happy to see this non-error from Macromedia Dreamweaver for a change ...

    [image]



    <font face="Tahoma" size="2">wait...does this mean that Dreamweaver is expecting an error?
    oh man...[8-)]</font>



    No, it means someone at dreamweaver wrote something like
    if ((hr = DoFunkyStuff()) != S_OK)
        ShowError(hr);
    but forgot that DoFunkyStuff() can return S_FALSE, which also indicates success. Somewhat lame, but not really a wtf.
  • (cs) in reply to John Smallberries
    John Smallberries:
    Alex Papadimoulis:


    wtf is a paradoxon?
    is it a cross between a paradox and a moron?


    It's old greek for "paradox".
  • Annon (unregistered) in reply to Cthulhon
    Anonymous:
    The question is rather implicit; I can't imagine a single naturally worded question where 'yes' would cancel the operation.


    This might be a bad idea. Do you want to cancel the operation?
  • Pasotaman (unregistered) in reply to Gene Wirchenko

    I think it's obvious that the question should read: "Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?"

  • (cs) in reply to andrey
    Anonymous:
    masklinn:

    the Very Stupid Thing about the Tortoise dialog, though, is that it comes after you've asked for a relocation and entered the new location of your repository.

    This means that if you pick the "wrong" choice then you're kinda fucked: if you click Yes (as the implied question is "Do you want to relocate?" indeed) the relocation starts immediately.

    In fact, would they so much as swap the dialogs (first this one then asking for the new location) the workflow would become much more interresting and this message would actually be useful. They could swap it to a regular alert message too, since you'd have the ability to pick whether you'll really relocate or not right at the next dialog.



    But wouldn't the main process start only after the confirmation?  This dialog is probably one of those 'this is your last chance to cancel the operation' boxes.  Still, I'd take a verbose dialog like this one over terse "Are you sure you want to relocate?" any day.

    The process does start after the confirmation, but that wasn't my point: merely reversing the two dialogs would ensure that the user is never confused and still has a chance (after this dialog) to make up his mind.

    Just try the thing out in Tortoise, you'll notice right out of the bat, the two windows should be reversed.

  • BAReFOOt (unregistered) in reply to Casiotone
    Casiotone:
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    Nathan Dunn was disappointed to find that the MySpace videos really weren't worth the plane trip across the Atlantic ...

    [image]

     

    Why is this a WTF?



    Yes, lt's hard to see the WTF, when you're part of it. ;-P
  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Annon
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The question is rather implicit; I can't imagine a single naturally worded question where 'yes' would cancel the operation.


    This might be a bad idea. Do you want to cancel the operation?


    Think like a programmer for a minute.  You are writing the last chance confirmation dialog for a process.  Which is more likely:

    a) You are writing a confirmation dialog so you grab a Yes/No dialog from your library of choice.  In your admirable desire to inform the user you forget to include the question.  You code YES to perform the operation and NO to cancel the operation, like 99% of the confirmation dialogs you have ever written.

    b) You are writing a confirmation dialog so you grab a Yes/No dialog from your library of choice.  You decide that in this case you will use reverse logic, where YES cancels the action and NO performs it.  Despite the fact that this is highly unusual and you take the time to write a detailed message about how FUBARed the data could become you forget to write your non-standard reverse logic question at the end of the dialog.


  • Incen (unregistered) in reply to OneFactor
    OneFactor:
    BiggBru:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    After reading this fairly helpful error message, Brian Bull changed his mind and decided to Switch instead of Relocate. What would you have clicked in this case?

    [image]

    <font face="Georgia">I think I would've unplugged my computer at this point. Or called the bomb squad.</font>

    <font face="Georgia">>BiggBru</font>

    If I had to wager, I'd click "no" because I think it implicitly asked "are you sure you want to relocate?".  But I'd be really worried because the default was "yes" and maybe the programmer was trying to default me to the safe choice. I'd probably type the message into Google and see what came up.

    If it were up to me, I'd unplug the network cable and then the computer.


    The default is 'No'. You can tell by the shadow. 'Yes' is just highlighted, probably due to either indecision or taking a screenshot externally.
  • someone (unregistered)

    this reminds me of that classic steam error message popup...

    "Error: no error".

    it usually happens when the network cable falls out.

  • Rowland (unregistered) in reply to stannius

    What's worse about the Crystal reports error is that it's probably meaningful to the developers that wrote it -- I remember hearing once that they have two error messages along the lines of "An unknown error has occured" -- the wording is identical, but the punctuation is enough for them to know what the cause is.

  • (cs) in reply to Josh

    Anonymous:
    > The Smiley Central ad is hilarious. What a waste of advertising money.

    Wow, I must be dense... I've been staring at the smiley central ad and I don't get it at all.  Why is this funny?  They don't support Opera, but there are lots of sites that don't support Opera, right?  He navigated to smileycentral.com (I can see that in the address bar).  What am I missing?

    I think maybe it's cause there is an advert built into the browser, top right? Maybe the dude clicked there?!?!

    I think opera sell banner spaces to people no? Or maybe there is a company they sell spaces to, and they sold spaces to smiley central, not knowing the implications, or it was the advertising company or something. Anyways

  • (cs) in reply to AndrewVos

    Speaking of ads...

    Wrong language?

    WTF?

  • (cs) in reply to Incen
    Anonymous:
    OneFactor:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    If I had to wager, I'd click "no" because I think it implicitly asked "are you sure you want to relocate?".  But I'd be really worried because the default was "yes" and maybe the programmer was trying to default me to the safe choice. I'd probably type the message into Google and see what came up.

    If it were up to me, I'd unplug the network cable and then the computer.


    The default is 'No'. You can tell by the shadow. 'Yes' is just highlighted, probably due to either indecision or taking a screenshot externally.

    Actually it's not clear what the default is, because these buttons are displayed in a state that should never occur in a properly coded dialog box.  The dotted rectangle is supposed to indicate which control has the keyboard focus.  The dark highlight around the edge is supposed to indicate the "default" button, unless a different button has the keyboard focus, in which case that button is supposed to be highlighted even though it isn't the default.

    All bets are off as to what will happen if you press the Spacebar, or the Enter key.

  • (cs) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    John Smallberries:
    Alex Papadimoulis:


    wtf is a paradoxon?
    is it a cross between a paradox and a moron?


    It's old greek for "paradox".

    yes, google told me that also, but why use something so arcane?
  • (cs) in reply to John Smallberries

    Wow, new forum version. Looks good so far, Alex.

    Maybe now all those posting "the real wtf is this forum software" will shut the fuck up.

  • (cs) in reply to John Smallberries
    John Smallberries:
    ammoQ:

    It's old greek for "paradox".

    yes, google told me that also, but why use something so arcane?


    In other languages, e.g. German, it's also "paradoxon". Maybe the text in the diaolog box was written by a non-native speaker.
  • Splork (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ

    Regarding paradoxon... a word it may be, but can it result to one?

    And TortoiseSVN is full of unhelpful things. It installs a start menu item, that when clicked, snidely advises that you should access it via an entirely different means to every other normal program installed on your machine. Of course it could have done something helpful, perhaps bring up the Options dialogue or something, but you know... that would require usability design.

  • Splork (unregistered) in reply to Splork

    Before I forget... who designed the Community Server logo? I'd like to inquire as to why the person is so happy about being surrounded by their own gaseous emissions.

  • (cs) in reply to Phil John

    The WTF isn't the "error" message persay, rather it's how you're prompted to choose Yes/No without a question. Which one should you choose?

    -shnar

  • Annon (unregistered) in reply to shnar
    shnar:
    The WTF isn't the "error" message persay, rather it's how you're prompted to choose Yes/No without a question. Which one should you choose?

    -shnar

    The question is clearly implied. Last words before the buttons state "... you should consult Help."
  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to Annon
    Anonymous:
    The question is clearly implied. Last words before the buttons state "... you should consult Help."
    Oh, well that's easy! Yes, I should consult help.
  • Coughtcha (unregistered) in reply to Jon

    Lovin' the new look so far!  And a "Preview" function.  Yaay.  Thank-you, Alex!

  • Lübbe (unregistered) in reply to makomk
    makomk:
    chrismcb:
    makomk:
    RiX0R:

    The only thing that's missing from this dialog is the question "Really perform the relocate? [Yes] [No]". The rest of the blurb is actually fairly useful because it warns you of bad stuff that might happen that otherwise you probably wouldn't have known about. I didn't know that relocates could be that harmful though -- if you relocate to the wrong URL, nothing stops you from relocating back, so the message might be a little overreacting.

    Yep - the error message looks to be fairly accurate, though it requires a bit of knowledge of the terminology to understand fully. IIRC, svn switch --relocate, which is the command-line equivalent of this, just changes the repository URL (so it'd better be the same repository, or interesting things could happen), whereas ordinary svn switch is basically like svn up, but changes branches at the same time.

     

    This is an error message? I thought it was a quiz.

     

    I HATE dialogs that have buttons that don't match possible answers, or even worse don't have a question at all.

    s/error message/warning/, but yes it is one - however much it may look like an ESP test.



    Hi guys,

    thanks for pointing this out to us. We fixed it...
    As it was, the dialog really only had the simple "Do you really want to relocate?" question in the beginning. After quite a few people messed up their working copy, because they didn't know the difference between switch and relocate (bad design on the subversion part IMNSHO).
    "Sure I wat to relocate, bugger off" -> YES -> "Why do all my commits fail?!?"

    Then we changed the question to a real stern warning and completely forgot about the question. That's life :-)

  • Daemonoid (unregistered) in reply to Dustman

    'Got' is not an abbreviation damn it! 'Gotten' is a made up word that's only printed in the American heritage (sic) dictionary – if it’s not in the OED it’s not English.

  • Blaze (unregistered) in reply to ammoQ
    ammoQ:
    John Smallberries:
    Alex Papadimoulis:


    wtf is a paradoxon?
    is it a cross between a paradox and a moron?


    It's old greek for "paradox".


    I read that "old geek".

    CAPTCHA: paula
    Brillant.
  • the real foo (unregistered) in reply to John Smallberries

    What's arcane about using the proper word?
    If your audience (or rather, readership) is able to understand what the "time continuum" is, they will have little problems with "paradoxon".

  • (cs) in reply to John Smallberries
    John Smallberries:
    Wow, new forum version. Looks good so far, Alex.

    Maybe now all those posting "the real wtf is this forum software" will shut the fuck up.

    Yes, Sir!

    (And hey, both the Edit button and quoting work under Opera!)

  • (cs) in reply to Bellinghman
    Bellinghman:
    (And hey, both the Edit button and quoting work under Opera!)

    And the preview works. OK, so the edit timeout is a tad on the short side, but it's certainly usable. This is a vast improvement.

    Thank you, Alex.

  • Hendrik (unregistered) in reply to RiX0R
    RiX0R:

    Zakhooi :D.



    Zakhooi actually only means Bag of hay; I don’t wanna know what you were thinking about.
  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Simley Central sure chose an odd place to advertise their website. This is just yet another reason that J Lennox should switch back to IE ...

    [image]

    This is less of a WTF than it looks like. Opera uses Google AdSense for the advertisments, meaning that Smiley Central did not choose to advertise in Opera directly, they chose to advertise via AdSense, which put the ad in Opera.

  • (cs) in reply to Bus Raker
    Bus Raker:

    Bus Raker:
    not first

    The real WTF is that no one gave me shit for this post.  Where's the love?



    Okay, pick one:

    1.  The real WTF is that the new forum software automatically puts in "Fist!"
    2.  The real WTF is that the new forum software filtered all the real "First!" posts and only allowed you to get the first post by negating it.
  • (cs) in reply to John Smallberries
    John Smallberries:
    Wow, new forum version. Looks good so far, Alex.

    Maybe now all those posting "the real wtf is this forum software" will shut the fuck up.


    Chances are that they will shut up, because they can't log in anymore.

    I for one won't be posting from home anymore, because I can't convince Konqueror to submit the login form.


    All because some poofy goof graphics designer wanted to give the login button a fancy-schmancy border.

    *Golf-clap*
  • (cs) in reply to kobes
    kobes:
    All bets are off as to what will happen if you press the Spacebar, or the Enter key.


    If I were confronted with this dialog, and I wanted to cancel, I would hit Esc.  This should perform the action most semantically equivalent to "Bail!" regardless of which button was the default, or had the focus.
  • Mr Tester (unregistered) in reply to BiggBru

    TEST

  • netdragon (unregistered) in reply to BiggBru

    I have usedTortioseSVN's Relocate functionality whenever I move my repository to a different domain name or IP address. It's nothing to worry about, but isn't something that should be used too often (or never at all if SVN is always at the same location).

  • (cs) in reply to Rowland
    Anonymous:
    What's worse about the Crystal reports error is that it's probably meaningful to the developers that wrote it -- I remember hearing once that they have two error messages along the lines of "An unknown error has occured" -- the wording is identical, but the punctuation is enough for them to know what the cause is.
    <font size="5">Y</font>ou are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  • (cs) in reply to Cthulhon

    Anonymous:
    The SVN one doesn't really seem bad enough to be called a WTF. The question is rather implicit; I can't imagine a single naturally worded question where 'yes' would cancel the operation.  You can't really make a case for confusing a non-technical person as SVN is meant for coders.  It's a minor bug, not really worth noting except on the product's bug tracker.

    Would you like to cancel the operation?

    The issue isn't so much that the question is missing, it is that it just finished telling you how bad things might be, AND then the question is missing. If the text wasn't so doomsdayish, it wouldn't be that bad.

  • (cs) in reply to triso

    New Forums...Hey....I dont have lines double the screen width....Yipee...these forums work.....(so far)

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