490766 - Field labels are not linked to helpful descriptions on enter_bug.cgi

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, defect)

Description

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

From pyrzak's students' research:

"While filling out a form the user does not immediately understand what each field is used for. There is help and documentation for a limited number of fields.

"As the user fills out the bug submission form several fields which do not have links to the help.  It is not immediately intuitive what the user must fill out.  The defined default fields without help are: flags, QA contact, cc, default cc, estimated hours, deadline, alias, URL, summary, description."

We should probably linkify the field labels to fields.html.

Comment 1

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Attachment: v1

Here we go! This requires the patch from the blocker.

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 412769 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

bitrotten:

patching file template/en/default/bug/create/create.html.tmpl
Hunk #6 FAILED at 442.
Hunk #9 FAILED at 499.

Comment 3

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Attachment: v2

Okay, this fixes the bitrot and updates a few other fields to use field_descs.

Comment 4

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 427462 [details] [diff] [review]
v2

This is working fine, but with your patch applied, the right column moves depending on the selected component, because the component description box can be wider or narrower. This doesn't happen with your patch backed out.

Comment 5

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Attachment: v3

So, turns out that enter_bug had some old HTML formatting in it that was holding the column widths in place. I switched that to CSS, and while I was at it, I took the opportunity to fix up the layout of enter_bug a bit. I noticed that the "we've made a guess" note had an unnecessary empty space below it, and it was spread across the whole form instead of under the OS box, so I moved it into a more sensible location. I also made the Component Description box be about the same height as the Component box itself.

  I tested this in every major browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE 6/7/8, Opera), and it looks fine. There's a comment about IE8 in the CSS--that's actually not a regression--the current page does the exact same thing in IE8, so we can file a bug on that and investigate if we want to, separately. (The only reason I didn't fix it here is that I don't know how, and I don't yet understand what IE 8 is doing differently, so it's something to investigate in another bug.)

Comment 6

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Attachment: Screenshot, v3, Full Description

Here's a screenshot of what v3 looks like in the Simple Form with the longest possible component description showing.

Comment 7

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Attachment: Screenshot, v3, Small Description

And just to round things out, here's what it looks like with a small component description.

Comment 8

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 432774 [details] [diff] [review]
v3

>+    <th rowspan="3"><a href="page.cgi?id=fields.html#version">
>+      [% field_descs.version FILTER html %]:</a></th>

>+    <th><a href="page.cgi?id=fields.html#cc">
>+      [%- field_descs.cc FILTER html %]:</a></th>

Why do some fields use [%- and some others [% ? Otherwise works fine. r=LpSolit

Comment 9

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Why do some fields use [%- and some others [% ? Otherwise works fine. r=LpSolit

  No particular reason. It actually doesn't matter if we specify that or not, since we have PRE_CHOMP => 1 turned on, which always does that. But it's nice to have the [%- in there to remind people that it's going to happen in certain situations, or in case we ever decide to turn off PRE_CHOMP.

  I fixed them all to be [%- on checkin.

Committing to: bzr+ssh://bzr.mozilla.org/bugzilla/trunk/                       
modified skins/standard/IE-fixes.css
modified skins/standard/global.css
modified template/en/default/bug/field.html.tmpl
modified template/en/default/bug/create/create.html.tmpl
Committed revision 7084.

Comment 10

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Added to the release notes in bug 604256.