Best Error Message Of 2009

10 Dec 2009

Google Chrome was finally released for OS X this week. There's plenty of ongoing debate about usability concerns, such as placement of tab close buttons.

While I don't have a lot to contribute to those arguments, I'd like to inquire as to why upon attempting to open an HTML file from the OS, I would be given an alert that reads:

The document 'index.html' could not be opened. Chrome cannot open files in the 'HTML document' format.

Chromium issue #14808, "Double-clicking a local html file with Chrome as default browser doesn't open the file", has been open since June 20th of this year. It is rated with a priority of 3, which translates to "Low. Resolve when time allows."

Did I miss some critical moment in time where opening HTML files locally became passé?

Posted by Dan Dickinson on Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 5:55 PM

Filed in and tagged , , , ,

Tangentially Related:

  • waffffffle
    Dan, this isn't a bug. If the web page isn't in the cloud then Google doesn't want you viewing it.
  • rare chrome fail. derp'ed.

    chrome still pwns other browsers. it's just a baby, that's all.
  • @Dan - totally agreed.
    @Jay - well, it is an open source project... :-)
  • Jay
    The real shame here is that it probably wouldn't take a code change - just a build setting to fix the problem. That's the standard dialog you get in a document-based app when you haven't correctly set up the file types that it can open.
  • Oh, there's definitely workarounds - "Open File" under the File menu works as well.

    But that doesn't excuse it not working through the most traditional method for opening a local file.
  • For some reason, it doesn't want to open via the doubleclick, or open with, methods. But you can just drag the file to the browser and it opens/renders just fine.
  • They're working on it. Funny though~
  • j00zt1n
    Yeah I noticed that too, god forbid we open an HTML document in a web browser. GG Google.
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About Dan

Dan Dickinson is a 29 year old living in Jersey City, New Jersey. He works at the strange intersection of collaborative technologies, education, software development, and medicine. His passions include finding unexpected paths and connections, music/rhythm video games, interesting food, and backchannels. This has been his primary (vivid) weblog since February of 2000.

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