[Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow

[Samuel Atkins]

Hi Cristoph,

thanks for the quick feedback (in great quantity!)

On 21/03/2011 10:41 PM, Christoph Noack wrote:
> Just a few questions at the beginning:
>        * Is that bug filing form intended to help less experienced users?
>          (Within this mail, I'll assume that).
Yes, that's the idea.
>        * Is the formatting of the page final, or will it be embedded in
>          another web page?
It's not final. I'm not sure whether it will be embedded into another 
page, but for the moment I'm not focusing on the appearance of it.
> At the moment, there are some minor issues and some things that look a
> bit illogical to me (but this may only be me). So please bear with me
> when I simply state some of these issues:
>        * When choosing the options, users might miss the information
>          whether they are finished or not. So my proposal would be to
>          state a text / placeholder like "Further information required."
>          and add visual clues (spacing, subtle headings, or ...) between
>          the different questions.
'Further info needed' message sounds good. Maybe unanswered questions 
should be a different colour to stand out, that'd be pretty simply to 
implement.
>        * The large heading "Before you file ..." seems to be a heading
>          for the whole page - I'm sure it is not. The whole page is about
>          the bug report (= the heading) and some hints to consider before
>          filing any issue (proposal: a separate box at the top). There,
>          please include the "If you are having more than one problem ..."
Yeah, that heading is left-over from the previous person's work, I 
hadn't got round to changing it.
>        * The whole text seems a bit too technical (assumption: less
>          technical users). There is "#libreoffice IRC", "crash", ODF (on
>          the wiki pages), "bug", ...
Thanks, it wouldn't have occurred to me that this was too technical. 
I'll have a go at making it simpler.
>        * The combination of some entries seems a bit strange, e.g.:
>                * "There is a problem with the website" + "Crashes the
>                  program"
Hmmm, the website message thing is a bug, that's not meant to be there!
>                * "LibreOffice crashes" + "Does it crash ... load or
>                  save ... document? YES" + "Do you need to load a
>                  document to execute those steps NO".
Yeah, that section needs reorganising. Actually, it probably makes the 
most sense to have to pick one of "crash when load/save", "crashes when 
I do these things" and "crashes randomly".
>        * Some helpful hints might be less helpful for users, e.g.:
>                * "If possible, please search the bug reports before ..."
>                  -->  If the users are less experienced, how and where to
>                  do that? If I remember correctly, Gnome let the user
>                  enter some terms and then searches within such kind of
>                  bug filing form.
Looks like a bug-search form should be simple to add. Good idea.
>                * "Are you sure ... fonts installed. Bear in mind ... may
>                  list fonts that are not installed". -->  How should the
>                  user identify what kind of fonts are installed (still, I
>                  assume less experienced users).
I did try and look for some existing documentation about seeing what 
fonts are installed/how to install them, but couldn't find any. If 
anyone knows of any, or could write some, it'd be helpful. :)
>                * "document ... then attach it" -->  where? (Maybe it's not
>                  yet implemented, but I didn't see the nice placeholders
>                  you used elsewhere).
Not yet implemented. I'm not yet sure whether picking a file on this 
page can be used to fill it in on the bugzilla form. Or if going the 
more ideal route of directly bypassing the form, how to submit multiple 
files (for instance screenshots as well). However, it looks like Michael 
Munch might have a better idea of that side. (I'll address that in 
another post shortly).
>        * Formatting stuff:
>                * The "Description" fields are very small - maybe the
>                  problems are small as well, but I think it is helpful to
>                  increase the field size a bit. (On my computer, the
>                  current size is approx 4x2 cm)
>                * The radio buttons are itself a list, so we might skip
>                  the additional bullets.
I haven't yet spent time making it look pretty, including these two 
things. I'll fiddle with the formatting once everything is working. :)
>        * It would be just great if the "For help on this, see here" could
>          just open an additional section below the current section. That
>          would save the users to jump back an forth with the newly opened
>          browser windows.
Hmmmm. It looks like the wiki has an API, so it would be possible to 
grab sections from the wiki. eg, 
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?action=render&title=User:AtkinsSJ/BugFiling 
<http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?action=render&title=User:AtkinsSJ/BugFiling>
Grabbing only a section looks a bit more complex, but doable.
> I hope this list doesn't look discouraging - quite the contrary. To me,
> it's a real please that somebody picked up this topic. So if you need
> more detailed proposals / an in-depth review, then please let me know
> (or just ping the Design Team). I'll wait for your request until you
> think it's ready ...
Perhaps a little discouraging at first! But very useful; I've got quite 
a list of things to work on with it now. Thanks!

~ Sam