CODEWITHSUNDEEP
silverlightexception
Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 905

How to detect and wrap "debugging resource strings are unavailable" w/o installing developer runtime?

I'm working on a Silverlight app that has an UnhandledException handler in the App class, which shows a message box containing the exception message. This is often fine for custom exceptions. However, it's not so good for built-in exceptions (e.g. NullReferenceException), because users don't have the developer runtime installed and therefore get a rather ugly "Debugging resource strings are unavailable" message.

My first thought (which I quickly dismissed) was to check the exception message for "debugging resource strings". I imagine if someone's running the app in, say, French, they'd get something like "les chaînes de ressources de débogage", so that wouldn't work.

Perhaps there's a way for a Silverlight app to detect whether it's running in the end-user runtime vs. the developer runtime? I've looked in the Application and Environment and Deployment classes, and haven't found anything.

I suppose this wouldn't be an issue if the application always threw custom exceptions anytime some sort of message needed to be shown to the user. Then I could easily hide the non-custom ones with a friendlier generic message. Is that the best/only option?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1472

Answers (1)

Oblivion2000
Oblivion2000

Reputation: 616

Just from an application design point of view, what user will know what to do with any kind of techy error message? "The value 'null' was found where an instance of an object was required." huh??

A simple "Something bad happened, if it continues, please contact support" should suffice. Just ensure that you log whatever bad happened somewhere, so that when you get the phone call/email, you can retrieve the issue in whatever techy details you require to solve the problem.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions