Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow

Hi Daniel,

On Fri, 2011-02-18 at 22:32 -0500, Daniel Neel wrote:
> Ok, a quick status update on this. Have been working on it some more -
> the current code is available at http://dneelyep.webs.com . Notes on
> the current progress below.

        Ooh :-) it looks really sweet ! This is a great start Daniel.

> Added a Submit button - not currently setup to bring up a pre-filled
> bug report.

        I wonder, if we can't avoid showing the bugzilla page entirely - and
simply provide a nicer whizzy front-end for that.

> Does anyone have more suggestions by chance to improve this? I'm
> definitely interested :).

        Yes; making it more lush and graphical would be good for a start. As an
example - the process of binary chopping documents down is really useful
to understand - IMHO we need more documentation on that, perhaps with a
picture of a document being chopped to help people understand.

        I think we probably also need to make the questions easier to
understand (think expert friendly, but idiot proof), of course this will
require a lot of thought to get the taxonomy right:

Radio buttons:
        ( ) can you crash LibreOffice somehow ?
        ( ) does your document not look right when it is loaded ?
        ( ) did other people have trouble reading the document
            you sent ?
        ( ) is there an unpleasant user interaction that makes it
            difficult to use ?
        [ if several of these, please file multiple reports ]

        I would also tend to hide everything else (including the submit
button) until the data is useful - so people have a fairly linear flow.

        ( ) can you crash LibreOffice somehow ?
                ( ) does this happen when you load or save a certain
                    document ?
                        + link to making minimal documents blurb :-)
                ( ) is there a simple set of steps, and button clicks
                    that can crash with no document loaded ?
                        + link to how-to-get-stacktrace documentation
                ( ) is the crash intermittent and un-predictable ?
                        + link to how-to-get-stacktrace documentation

        ( ) does your document not look right when it is loaded ?
                + link to making minimal documents blurb
                [x] I am certain that I have the correct fonts installed
                    on the system for this document
                        + link to fc-list (Linux), and Mac/Win details
                        + NB. the 'font' drop-down in LO lies - we
                          should explain that.
                + ask for screenshots before / after of the problem

        ( ) did other people have trouble reading the document
            you sent ?
                ( ) Do you have the original document in OpenDocument
                    format ?
                        No == very hard to work out what went wrong.
                        can you try to reproduce what you did, and
                        first save it in ODF, before exporting ...
                        Yes == link to producing minimal document
                        description ;-)

        ( ) is there an unpleasant user interaction that makes it
            difficult to use ?
                + no idea where to go here I guess.     

        I suspect we could avoid asking which component is involved, and just
look at up-loaded test document / file extensions in many cases to
auto-select the component.

        I liked your proxies for severity: "causes loss of content" etc. -
asking people the severity of their bug is almost never a good idea :-)
[ which is why I like the plan to hide the actual bug form from them ].

        Anyhow - this is a really sexy initiative :-) Hopefully we can get some
more artwork support from the design team, to actually make it fun /
pretty to file really good bugs.

        What can we do to make it easier to file ? eg. can we wrap the account
creation flow in some pleasant way ? Perhaps that should be step #1 -
without an E-mail address and a real account, it is fairly pointless
filing a bug IMHO.

        Thanks !

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot