In the realm of DrJava, I have added a new error handling dialog. The first time an error occurs, a small notification box pops up with “More Information” and “Close” buttons. There is also a “Keep showing this notification” checkbox that allows the user to completely disable the notification.
In addition to the notification box, a red “DrJava Errors” button appears in the toolbar. That button or the “More Information” button lead to a dialog that lets the user browse through all exceptions that have occurred since the last reset, to copy stack traces and environment information, and to dismiss all errors that have occurred.
The advantage of this new system is that it is less distracting. Many of the errors that do occur are not fatal to the execution of DrJava, and the user can quite easily continue, though perhaps with limited functionality. More importantly, serious errors in the event thread cannot, as in the past, bury the user under more and more error dialogs, thus effectively deadlocking the program. I have also fixed a good dozen bugs. My DrJava involvement should come to an end for this semester, but I’m not so sure it will… DrJava has become a guilty pleasure of mine.
