Allow users to read the error messages without hovering the mouse cursor

Post author
Kamil Slowikowski

Summary

Full error messages are only visible on a mouse hover interaction.

Only the truncated error messages are visible on the ERRORS page.

Problem

In the screenshot below, please notice:

  1. The full error message is only visible briefly for a moment if the user happens to hover the mouse cursor over a tiny element on the page.
  2. There are two red warning icons, and only one of them shows the full error message on mouse hover.
  3. There is no way for the user to see all of the errors, even when hovering over the special icon. Notice that the message is truncated in the tiny popup window, so the user cannot see all of the errors.
  4. The ERRORS page shows the truncated error message instead of the full error message.

This is a major usability issue, and it makes the user experience unnecessarily cumbersome and frustrating.

Solution

Always show the full error message (without truncating it) in a text field that the user can copy and paste.

Avoid unfriendly design patterns like hiding information behind a mouse-hover interaction.

Please consider simplifying the interface to show all information on a single page to reduce the number of clicks to success.

Comments

5 comments

  • Comment author
    Samantha (she/her)

    Hi Kamil Slowikowski,

     

    Thanks for writing in. The error message you see by hovering over the icon is also shown in the ERRORS tab of the same Job Manager page, which you can copy/paste. Are you finding that that is not the case? 

     

    Best,

    Samantha

    -1
  • Comment author
    Kamil Slowikowski

    Here is a workaround for anyone interested.

     

    Open the page that has the error message in Google Chrome.

     

    Next, open the console with CMD + SHIFT + C and make sure the "Console" window is selected. This is what you should see:

     

    Next, we will execute a small piece of Javascript code to manually extract the error message 5 seconds after we launch the code.

    In that 5 second time frame, we need to move our mouse cursor out of the console window and back into the main window, so that it hovers the special icon and the error is visible in the popup. Then wait for the code to execute.

     

    Here is the code you should copy and paste into the console:

    function ugh() {
    setTimeout(function() {
    console.log(document.querySelector("clr-tooltip-content").textContent)
    ugh()
    }, 5000)
    }
    ugh()

     

    If you were successful, then the error messages should be printed into the console, where you can finally copy and paste them (see below).

    Good luck!

    1
  • Comment author
    Kamil Slowikowski
    • Edited

    Hi Samantha,

    No, the ERRORS tab does not have the full text of the error messages. It only has a truncated error message.

     

    Here is what I see on the ERRORS tab:

    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.link_arc_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.link_arc_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'

     

    And here is the full error message that I was only able to retrieve with hacky Javascript (see my previous comment):

    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.link_arc_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.link_arc_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'
    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.sample_vdj_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.sample_vdj_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'
    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.link_fbc_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.link_fbc_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'
    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.sample_atac_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.sample_atac_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'
    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.sample_feature_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.sample_feature_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'
    Failed to evaluate 'if_condition' (reason 1 of 1): Evaluating (generate_count_config.link_multi_ids[0] != "") failed: Bad array access generate_count_config.link_multi_ids[0]: Array size 0 does not have an index value '0'

    1
  • Comment author
    Kamil Slowikowski

    I would like to raise another issue here:

    • The full text of all of the error messages should be available in one of the hundreds of text files that we can retrieve with gsutil cp -r gs://path-to-workflow-stuff but it seems that none of the error messages displayed on the Terra website are recorded in any of the files there.

    In my opinion, that is unexpected behavior.

    1
  • Comment author
    Edyta Malolepsza

    Hello Terra Admins,

    Is there any way to easy copy the entire error message? As Kamil showed, only small piece of the error message is visible while hovering. The Job Manager page was not created in my case, so I cannot check the error there (if available) and the workaround he proposed does not work for me.

    Thanks.

    1

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