My DT crashed multiple times recently. I attempted some troubleshooting and found the apparent (reproducible) culprit:
I have a bookmark of this specific web site: https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-display
DT tends to crash whenever I click and open this bookmark inside DT. 4 out 5 times it crashed before the webpage finishes loading. 1 time it crashed shortly after that.
The website opens without issue in Safari on the same machine.
I have hundreds of bookmarks. This is (to my knowledge) the only one that crashes DT.
Obviously, I can avoid the issue by simply deleting the bookmark, which I have done. I’m curious about the cause, though. Is it triggered by something within that webpage?
DT 3.9.8, macOS 15.3.2 (not yet upgrading to 15.4 due to a very specific change). Below is my Web setting in DT.
I see the same situation and response have previously been repeated in severalotherthreads concerning different websites.
It’s quite understandable that some web content would not render well in some browser. But crashing the app is a significant escalation.
When Safari crashes, I would immediately suspect there’s something wrong with the website I just navigated to. DT, on the other hand, is not a dedicated web browser. It will take multiple crashes (or a tedious support ticket) before the user could even have a chance to realize they shouldn’t open certain “bombmarks”.
That’s just disastrous UX. We’ve had multiple posts here lamenting that DT crashes often. I suspect those experiences have something to do with the “bombmarks”. A hundred such bookmarks in a database, and you are playing the good ol’ Minesweeper game. Yay!
I hope “incompatible web technologies” do not crash or beachball the entire program. Blanking the tab, for instance, is a much better indicator of incompatibility.
Crash-only programming is definitely easier than crash-proof programming, and you hardworking guys don’t have the resources to cover everything. Still, something to prevent the “bombmarks” from exploding upon clicking would be desirable.
I would agree if it were our code causing the issue but it isn’t. And it’s not always and/or easily possible to work around crashes or freezes caused by system components. Otherwise we would have done that a long time ago.
DT does not render HTML documents by itself. It relies on Apple’s frameworks for that. And those frameworks have bugs. There’s nothing a software can do if a framework it relies on crashes.
Aside: Apple’s code does not even render HTML identically on iOS and macOS.
Is it possible to show a log message, something like A bookmark might have caused the crash, when user reopens DT after DT crashes with an active bookmark tab?
The worst part of my own experience was that I initially had no idea what could be causing the crash. A log message give the user a useful clue about what might cause the crash. Way better than them finding the culprit, either by themselves or with the help of a support ticket, after crashes and crashes.
meowky, I also worked in the software industry for 30+ years. When something happened that infrequently - “I have hundreds of bookmarks. This is (to my knowledge) the only one that crashes DT.” - and by the way, happens to me too every 2 or 3 months or so, it would be considered a P3 or P4. “Would be nice to have, but we are really busy trying to solve much more pressing issues”. Besides, the user does know what he was doing, right, trying to open a bookmark… Just my 2 cents.
Then you might know the average user is unfortunately not going to sympathize with the developers when his program repeatedly crashes itself. They will be instantly convinced that the software is faulty, even if the problem can be easily rectified and it’s otherwise a pretty solid app. That conviction will not shake off easily.
Your presumption that …
… feels way too optimistic, given the rate of digital illiteracy today. Not to mention there are many ways for a user to inadvertently open a bookmark in DT without paying attention.
… on one user’s device, it can be much more frequent on another’s device. The crash seems to be related to a certain type of web technology, not one website. Is it plausible that a user bookmarks many sites using the same problematic technology?
Frequency can hardly be measured objectively (because so many things can change). A reproducible crash is always a serious UX issue nonetheless.
There can be good reasons, from the dev’s perspective, for not fixing a problem. I would accept “Apple sucks”, among others. It’s indeed regrettable (and unfair to devs relying on frameworks provided by Apple) that some infuriating problems, like the bombmarks, are practically unfixable.
The question is, will the end-user hear that when they experiences seemingly mysterious crashes? What will the user think if they have never subscribed to tech news or reached out to people with technical knowledge? Uh-oh, this thingy crashed again. Damn.
Guess what they’ll do next? Open a support ticket or uninstall the thingy?
