25700 - [RFE] bug reporting wizard

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Completely Blue Sky but....
OK, here's what I envision:  A user, upon finding a bug in mozilla, goes to the 
'Tasks' menu and clicks on the menuitem 'Report a Bug'.  Mozilla launches a 
small wizard that gathers bug data (asks the user to fill in information)and 
submits a bug report to bugzilla.  It would behave similarly to FullCircle 
except that it doesn't require a crash to launch.

Comment 1

[Joseph Elwell]

This doesn't even really need to be built into Mozilla. This could be a webtool. 

It would be most useful to prescreeners, because it would help keep people from 
forgetting things like OS, Build #, whether or not it's reproducable. Of course 
all the fields would still be optional.

Comment 2

[don]

Chris, not a bad idea here.  What do you think?

Comment 3

[Sean Richardson]

While I'd love to see a spiffy Wizard as such, it would be encapsulate the
two hard parts of filing a bug report into a Wizard: finding out if the bug
has been reported before, and assigning it to the right component. Both
effectively require looking at at least one other browser window except
in those rare cases where the reporter already knows it's absolutely not
a DUP and the correct component - and the users of a wizard interface
are unlikely to be filing those bugs.

To put it another way, filing a bug report is not a simple linear activity,
and a Wizard interface, while ensuring certain of the simpler bug report 
requirments are met, may, because of the presence of a [Next] button on each
panel, speed a new reporter along too quickly, by disguising the importance
of doing a bit of reading before writing up a bug report.

Much of the functionality wanted here is already available in Christene Begle's 
Bugzilla Helper, http://www.mozilla.org/quality/help/bug-form.html - 
a js-enabled form that acts as a front-end to enter_bug.cgi. 

With a bit of design polish and colour-coordiantion, the Bugzilla Helper form 
could have much of the feel of an integrated webtool.

Comment 4

[Sean Richardson]

First sentence, last comment above should begin as
  >While I'd love to see a spiffy Wizard as such, it would be _hard to_
  >encapsulate the two hard parts of filing a bug report into a Wizard:

Comment 5

[Paul MacQuiddy]

changing qa contact on selected bugs from paulmac to [e-mail]

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

OK, after thinking about this a bit more I'm ready to withdraw this request.  I 
think that the bugzilla helper and lots of big bright arrows pointing to the 
bugzilla helper is probably a better solution.  Setting status to INVALID

Comment 7

[Eli Goldberg]

Agreed. Welcome, Asa! (sorry for not calling yet, mostly out of office...)