1982282 - Attachment form/input is misleading as a textarea

Status: ASSIGNED

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Clément Lefèvre]

File attachment when reporting a bug looks like a textarea, and any user not awaken enough can easily mix it up with the field where we want to write message/describe the picture (although when typing there it seemed very strange width wasn't limited and we could litterally gets infinite horizontal scrolling). This can be even more misleading when similar-looking textareas on different code forges are inserting HTML/markdown link to the file. Furthermore, what user typed is lost once a file is selected for upload.

There's probably a very good reason explaining why it's not a sinple upload form button, but in doubt I reported this curiosity here (interested in the explanation for this particular-looking file upload form element if that's the case, though!)

Comment 1

[Clément Lefèvre]

Attachment: Screenshot 2025-08-11 at 09.59.25.png

The area we're talking about.

Comment 2

[David Lawrence [:dkl]]

I can see how it would look like a comment field and be confusing to the end user. We could add some more help text to help differentiate the two textareas and their purpose for the time being until a better UI solution can be found.

Proposed text change to:

Browse a file, drag and drop it, paste text/image/link below, or take a screenshot. To add an additional comment to this attachment, use the text field below instead.

Comment 3

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Attachment: 3_test_reminders.t

Comment 4

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Sorry, I thought I was working on my local instance. Anyway, it’s actually a textarea. You can paste a patch, etc. to attach it.

As the original developer of the attachment UI, I’ll volunteer to take care of this. Let me think about how to reduce the confusion.

Comment 5

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

I’m refactoring the attachment input as part of Bug 1995464 because the work spec requires the ability to paste attachments.

We can use the clipboard read API to allow pasting; this method wasn’t available in Firefox when I implemented the attachment form.

Comment 6

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Attachment: redesigned attachment selector

This is what I’ve implemented in Bug 1995464.