mysterious "an error occurred"

[Martin Pool]

(See screenshot)

When launchpad gets an error processing a form, it shows a warning as shown. This is very good in many ways (I like the colour), but when looking only above the fold of the page it's apparently very mysterious: "an error occurred? what error?"

Scrolling down I can see there are actually highlights around particular fields but the initial impression is quite confusing.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

required comments suck

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

Martin, what was the specific error that was indicated in the body of the form? I'm sure mpt can help us improve that but to confirm I need to be able to reproduce it myself. I guess it's a particularly unhelpful message if the actual error is scrolled off the screen!

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

The error asked me to please select a particular person (as in #36880)
in the asignee/drafter fields.

--
Martin

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

Right, gotcha.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This is a Zope problem (hence the misspelling of "occurred"). We need to override it to say "There were N problems with the information you entered. Please fix them and try again". But that's a problem for Bjorn, because I don't know how to ... Wait a minute, I *do* know how to do that. We already do it in edit forms.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

On 31 Mar 2006, Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden> wrote:
> This is a Zope problem (hence the misspelling of "occurred"). We need to override it to say "There were N problems with the information you entered. Please fix them and try again". But that's a problem for Bjorn, because I don't know how to ... Wait a minute, I *do* know how to do that. We already do it in edit forms.

That would be better -- but still if there is only this message on the
initial screen the user may ask, "what, and I'm supposed to just guess
what they are". So perhaps add "see below for details" or something.

--
Martin

[xoc (doctorxoc)]

I'm trying to submit a bug right now, and I get this not very helpful message too. The difference is, there are no fields I haven't filled out, and I can't work out what could possibly be wrong with my submission.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

xoc, that is bug 41399, which will require a different fix than this bug will.

[Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)]

Launchpad now displays at the top of the form the number of errors and highlights inidividual fields. Closing, please re-open if the current fix doesn't address the reported problem.