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Admittedly, I pretty much tried to fit a square peg into a round hole, but I accidentally used the image upload button instead of the link button when trying to post a link to a question.

Current State

current invalid url upload error

Previous State

imgur invalid url upload error

This might bite someone who say, tried to use a imgur or other image upload site link they thought was a image but wasn't.

I feel like the error could be more descriptive than "unhandled web exception" - especially if the uploader assumed the link was an image file rather than a link

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  • I don't think "an error occurred" is any more descriptive than "unhandled web exception". In fact I think it's less descriptive. Both are clearly errors, but only one even hints at what kind of exception it is. Commented Apr 29, 2024 at 19:02
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    @TylerH I think the edit showing previous state was just meant to illustrate that the change didn't necessarily make anything worse, just that both states are similarly unactionable. Commented Apr 29, 2024 at 19:07
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    Yeah, @AaronBertrand deduced my intent which was at least to document old state since it's not easy for end users to see. Working on a quick fix that makes this better overall. Commented Apr 29, 2024 at 20:12
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    I'd just like to say I appreciate the effort both in documenting the previous state (which i honestly had forgotten/never seen) and in looking into a solution to the issue. Well and how painless the move has been so far. Commented Apr 30, 2024 at 4:27
  • If you try to upload an unsupported filetype, it tells you what filetypes you can upload. This looks like a slightly more useful option. And I didn't try to break it on purpose! tenor lies about file types Commented Apr 30, 2024 at 23:48

2 Answers 2

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Okay, we now have some better error messaging in place. Depending on the URL, we may either tell you it didn't look enough like a valid image or just that we failed to download it all together

failed to download image from URL

not a valid file type

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  • 1
    Looks good to me Commented May 1, 2024 at 14:12
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    While "download" is technically correct, I wonder if it would be confusing to people on non-technology-oriented sites. For example someone might see the error message and say "I don't want to download this image, I want to upload this image!". Maybe something like "Failed to fetch image from URL" would be better? Commented May 1, 2024 at 14:49
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    ... After I left my previous comment, I just noticed the error message about invalid image types actually uses the word "upload" (i.e. "Please upload a ...") so there is some inconsistency there too. Maybe the verb should instead be something like "use" or "enter" (e.g. "please enter a ...") Commented May 1, 2024 at 14:58
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I can't check what the previous uploader used to show, so I checked on imgur itself and that's what they show:

error on imgur when trying to upload from URL which isn't a valid image

The text says:

Sorry, URL failed to upload.

Which is indeed more descriptive than a cryptic "unhandled web exception". Would be better if SE changed to such a message as well, or something along those words.

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