Chris Johnston

I have been playing around with the new Democracy Player which is in Beta currently (for good reason, it is far from stable) and it threw an error. This is what came up:

This is an excellent example of what an error message should look like for a beta product, in my opinion at least. It provides all the information that the developers need to diagnose what happened and it provides the user with the information that they need as well.

I tried another beta out once and it crashed. I submitted a bug and, as a reply, got an email that told me that my bug report was pretty much useless and could I please recompile the software using such and such flags, try what I did again, and please email them the complete stack trace. No way. I uninstalled the program.

The developers of Democracy Player though provide the stack trace, the log file, everything in the little window frame along with the web address to submit a bug and a humourous error message at the top of the dialogue box to reassure the user.

As for the Democracy Player, it looks like it should be excellent once they have all the bugs squashed. However, till then, I would advice people not give it a try. In my opinion, it should not have been released, even as a beta. It feels more like a pre-alpha release. Although, it is a very cool idea and I look forward to watching it evolve.