Turning Off "Debug" in IE (And Other Tweaks)

Reader Paul wries:  Quite often I am asked if I want to "debug." I'm really tired of that as when I do ask for details the info is ambiguous at best. I don't want to be asked... period. Help.

I'm assuming Paul is talking about Internet Explorer's oh-so-helpful "debug" dialog box ("Error. A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you want to debug?"), which pops up whenever there's a bug in the JavaScript you run into on a website. This happens with shocking regularity: Either people are terrible programmers or IE is a terrible browser, or both. If you're an IE user, you certainly know what I'm talking about, and the one time you did click Debug, you had no idea what to do with that information. It's altogether one of IE's most absurd features.

Luckily, turning it off is simple.

In either IE6 or IE7, click Tools > Internet Options, then click the Advanced tab.  Make sure there are check marks next to "Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)" and "Disable Script Debugging (Other)." Uncheck the box next to "Display a notification about every script error." It should look like the example in the screenshot above.

While you're disabling useless dialog boxes, you might as well turn off error reporting for those (many) times when IE crashes. It's easy. In Windows XP, go to the System control panel, click Advanced, then click "Error Reporting" at the bottom of the screen. Click the button next to "Disable error reporting." Turn off "But notify me when critical errors occur" if you want... it doesn't really matter much.