499548 - bugzilla.mozilla.org default search should have a product selection option

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090620 Minefield/3.6a1pre
Build Identifier: 

Default search on bugzilla.mozilla.org could be significantly more efficient if there was a product selection option that allows the user to restrict the search to one product of his choice, like Thunderbird, Firefox etc.
This could be realized e.g. in the form of a simple dropdown list below the "Find a bug" input box. Default choice for the dropdown list would be "All products", and most popular products like Thunderbird and Firefox should be at the top of the list.

Have a look at the visual product selection when posting a new bug for inspiration. It is interesting to realize that while there is an excellent visual product selection option when *posting a new bug*, there is no product selection at all available when *searching for an existing bug* (unless you use advanced search, which is way to complex for such an everyday task). 

Imagine you are a newbie or non-freak user of bugzilla.mozilla.org. People have advised you that you can check there if your favourite long-standing bug has been posted already, and post a new bug if necessary. Mozilla's people also have a strong interest in that people should search existing bugs before posting new bugs to avoid duplicates. Finding existing bugs before even starting with posting a new bug would help to avoid duplicates from the start. But finding a bug for a specific product is way to hard without a default search product selection at top level.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thomas,

Are you talking mainly about the guided bug entry?  Your comments lead me to believe so.  In fact the guided bug form does what you suggest -  the query for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Thunderbird&format=guided   generates https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?format=simple&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=Thunderbird&product=Core&product=Toolkit&product=PSM&product=NSPR&product=NSS&chfieldfrom=-6m&chfieldto=Now&chfield=[Bug+creation]&content=<string>

In the more general case, I agree this might new users.  A common complaint heard is "search is hard."   

If you have an interest in improving guided bug entry, there are additional issues that might help improve the process. We could also discuss in #tb-qa, m.d.a.thunderbird or elsewhere. Also, have a look at bug 500576 - it helps address your last paragraph.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot: bmo front page with quick search product selector (as proposed here)

(In reply to comment #1)
> Are you talking mainly about the guided bug entry? 

No, I'm talking about the main search field on bmo front page
My bad, here's what's missing:

STR

1 open bugzilla.mozilla.org
2 be a good half-experienced user and want to do a search even before you start filing bugs, or just want to do a search for some bug you're interested in:
3 Try to search from the front page for bugs that belong to a specific product like TB or FF

Actual result
- there is no easy way user can do product specific search right from front page

Expected result
- bmo front page main quicksearch form should have a product selector, e.g. like in the attached mockup screenshot

The product selector should then probably behave similar to what we now do when entering bugs for a certain product - search related products also:

> the query for
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Thunderbird&format=guided  
> generates
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?format=simple&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=Thunderbird&product=Core&product=Toolkit&product=PSM&product=NSPR&product=NSS&chfieldfrom=-6m&chfieldto=Now&chfield=[Bug+creation]&content=<string>
> 
> In the more general case, I agree this might help new users.  A common
> complaint heard is "search is hard."

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

There's a product selector on the Simple Search:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi?format=specific
but I don't know if the Bugzilla team plan to retain that going forward.

The trouble with having a product selector is that not all Firefox bugs are in the Firefox product - they might be in Core or Toolkit also. So we would need to use JavaScript to convert the name of the product the user selected into a set of Bugzilla products to search.

Gerv

Comment 4

[David Lawrence [:dkl]]

I feel that https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi?format=instant satisfies this request now. Closing.