[auxiliarymoose]

It is also (nearly) impossible to completely crash a web page. There isn't a main loop that can panic out. No matter where an exception gets thrown, the overall application keeps going and responding to events.

Can't access a network resource? API returns an unexpected error? Library crashes? Browser extension breaks something? Doesn't matter. The user can still view and scroll the page, and the rest of it will probably keep working, too.

[franga2000]

Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).

The amount of articles on HN that render perfectly, then vanish a second later and are replaced by this error message is insane. Yes, I'm using an old unmaintained Android HN reader with a questionable webview. No, that's not an excuse to delete a perfectly rendered from right in front of my eyes.

[rerdavies]

Sure. But it's not the browser that did that. You see the dialog because the app HANDLED the error condition, and application code displayed an dialog. Had the error not been handled, the browser's behavior is to log a message to the browser console (which you, as a user, never see), and carry on, pretending that the error never happened. So the page would have continued on in some non-functional, or half-functional state.