296115 - Bug editing (show_bug.cgi) should indicate what changes will require a comment (as per commenton* params)

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, enhancement)

Description

[Matt McHenry]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.1) Gecko/20040707
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.1) Gecko/20040707

Users of our bugzilla installation frequently forget which changes will require
a comment and which ones won't.  (Heck, I'm the maintainer and I forget
sometimes!)  They've seen the big red "You have to specify a comment on this
change. Please give some words on the reason for your change" message, and don't
like it.  So instead, they tend to add comments if they're unsure.  This
generates lots of "noise" on the bug, and bugmail-spam for folks who only want
bugmail when comments are added (but not when e.g. milestones are changed).

Instead of this message (which is only shown after the "commit" button is
pressed and the form is processed), the bug-editing UI should provide some more
immediate feedback about whether a comment will be required.  I'm not sure
exactly what form this would take, but some ideas are:

1) annotate each UI element somehow to indicate whether changing it will require
a comment.

2) add javascript to the commit button so that the user doesn't have to wait for
the server to reply before seeing that their changes will require a comment.

3) change the page dynamically as the user modifies various form elements. 
Maybe the commit button would be disabled if they've changed something that
requires a comment, and then would re-enable when a comment has been entered.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce: