What Happened to Operation Aborted?

What Happened to Operation Aborted?

Steven Parker on 25 April 2008 - 13:49 · 36 comments & 17408 views

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You browse to your favorite news site. The content starts loading, you've already started reading the headline, and then it happens. Those of you familiar with the operation aborted dialog know that it spells sudden doom for the website you're currently viewing. Unsuspecting users have no idea what it means and simply click 'OK' and then watch in horror as the web page they were just reading disappears; only to be replaced by an navigation error screen. More savvy users move the dialog out of the way so that they can finish reading what was visible before they too accept the inevitable...

This dialog (and its side-effects) is gone in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.

View: The Full Article @ The IEBlog

Have you ever seen this dialog while surfing the web in Internet Explorer?

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#1 Raptor on 25 Apr 2008 - 13:55

Interesting. I don't think I've ever seen that dialog.

#2 markjensen on 25 Apr 2008 - 13:55

Yea! They fixed a horribly-implemented error recovery!

... and there was much rejoice.

(3 replies) #3 MioTheGreat on 25 Apr 2008 - 13:59

Nope. I've never seen this dialog, and I've been using IE as my main browser for like a year now.

#3.1 markjensen on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:10

Good grief! I must have been the only person in the world to have ever seen this! Let me tell you, it was frustrating that I clicked OK and the whole page went away.

#3.2 MightyJordan on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:59

(markjensen said @ #3.1)

Good grief! I must have been the only person in the world to have ever seen this!

Nope, you're not alone there. I've seen it many times, most of the time here on Neowin!

#3.3 Krome on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:23

(MightyJordan said @ #3.2)

(markjensen said @ #3.1)

Good grief! I must have been the only person in the world to have ever seen this!

Nope, you're not alone there. I've seen it many times, most of the time here on Neowin!

Yeah. It happens to me too and ONLY on Neowin and quite frequent. I can't get that effect to happen on other sites. But lately, I have not come accross this error. It kinda vanish. My thought was that it has something to do with the ads. So now that I have an A/V that takes care of that problem, that "side-effects" seems to disappear.

#4 Angel Blue01 on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:23

I've been using IE since 1997 and I've never seen this

#5 C_Guy on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:42

I've never seen this in the 11 years I've been using Internet Explorer

(1 reply) #6 Titoist on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:57

Ive never seen this either. Makes you think what people are doing to their browsers or what kind of websites they are visiting that causes this dialog to appear. pr0n!

#6.1 XerXis on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:43

(Titoist said @ #6)

Ive never seen this either. Makes you think what people are doing to their browsers or what kind of websites they are visiting that causes this dialog to appear. pr0n!

it used to appear quite a lot on neowin (seems to have gone now), some kind of problem in the java script (endless loop i guess)

#7 bluewind_89 on 25 Apr 2008 - 14:58

You people must have really bad memories.

#8 qdave on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:07

yep it can be quite anoying at a times. finally they fixed it.

#9 HalcyonX12 on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:31

What was this feature supposed to do originally? Why was it there in the first place?

#10 neufuse on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:42

Seen it a few times but it has been rare

#11 Alex Bishop on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:46

Never had this problem on firefox...

#12 cpenner on 25 Apr 2008 - 16:07

Haha yea, mostly on Neowin actually, but it came and went. I used to browse a site called Flexbeta, but I couldn't view ANY OF THE SITE because the stupid dialog kept popping up every single time. So I gave up trying...

#13 Max™ on 25 Apr 2008 - 16:31

I get this a fair amount of times when fixing someone elses PC. Never happens on mine though.

#14 Justin- on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:23

They don't have this in Firefox.

I remember those days in IE though. I hated those boxes when they happened to pop up.

#15 +Jedimark on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:45

The only site I see this error on is Neowin!

#16 strekship on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:57

Never seen that error before.

(4 replies) #17 Xenomorph on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:59

I've been using Internet Explorer since 1.0 back 13 years ago.

I've never seen this error.

What I have seen, and what does bother me with IE, it doesn't matter what version (I think IE8 still does it), but when I right click and go to save a JPG or GIF, IE wants to save it as UNTITLED.BMP.

UNTITLED.BMP

UNTITLED.BMP

UNTITLED.BMP

Just another reason Firefox is so nice.

#17.1 markjensen on 25 Apr 2008 - 19:30

Say what? IE6, saving the Google logo from their http://google.com site:
screenshot
(yeah, it saves it as a .gif, and with the correct "logo.gif" filename specified on their site.)

#17.2 random_n on 26 Apr 2008 - 00:03

I have one reliable way to reproduce that; find a thread on Neowin here with an image that's been "shrunk" to fit on the page. Click to blow it up, and try and save the image that opens in the new window/tab. UNTITLED.BMP strikes again!

Now, right click -> save target directly on the shrunken image works fine... howabout that, eh?

#17.3 MaceX on 26 Apr 2008 - 10:02

The reason this happens is because the cache is full. Clear the cache, refresh, and you should be able to save as the source format again.

#17.4 Jugalator on 26 Apr 2008 - 18:27

(MaceX said @ #17.3)

The reason this happens is because the cache is full. Clear the cache, refresh, and you should be able to save as the source format again.

Yep, I agree with this and think that's why. It's some kind of bug in IE.

#18 RangerLG on 25 Apr 2008 - 18:00

Been a few years since I have seen it. Might even be all the way back to IE5.5.

#19 Garry on 25 Apr 2008 - 18:30

I think most people have seen this from time to time - usually due to a dodgy Javascript the site is trying to load. It's hardly the harbinger of death that the article sensationalises though.

#20 Buttus on 25 Apr 2008 - 20:15

YES! i hate this error and never really knew why it happened.... the only way i could get around it, was reload the page and be quick enough to hit the stop button before it got the error...

i'm glad the only place i use IE is at work....

#21 +Ely on 25 Apr 2008 - 21:17

I hate that when it happens, it has happened to me many times; particulary here at Neowin.

#22 freeza on 25 Apr 2008 - 22:30

Um, I've never seen this dialog before in my life and i've been using Windows since 95!

(1 reply) #23 Intelman on 26 Apr 2008 - 01:15

IE8 Beta 1 doesn't work well with websites yet. I am surprised Firefox 3 works as well as it does. I'm eager for the next beta, I'm ready to get rid of IE7.

#23.1 phiberoptik on 26 Apr 2008 - 13:23

You could easially install Firefox 2.0 and ditch IE7 right now...

#24 peachey on 26 Apr 2008 - 03:57

Unsuspecting users have no idea what it means and simply click 'OK' and then watch in horror as the web page they were just reading disappears; only to be replaced by an navigation error screen. More savvy users move the dialog out of the way so that they can finish reading what was visible before they too accept the inevitable...

or you just click ok and then refresh and it works fine.

#25 MaceX on 26 Apr 2008 - 10:01

I have seen this dialog a few times while browsing Neowin. Pretty annoying as it does not explain why it happened. Usually clearing the dialog and then hitting the back button fixes it though.

#26 Burst404 on 26 Apr 2008 - 17:49

I've been using FireFox since... will, a while... So, no matter to me. But, I feel for you IE guys... =D

#27 Don Matteo on 27 Apr 2008 - 04:57

this sounds like it was written by those good ol' sensationalists over at the register "..then watch in horror as the web page they were just reading disappears..." lol

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What Happened to Operation Aborted?

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