Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
Hi Ivan, Glad you found some time to have a think about this. :-) On 04/04/2011 11:14 AM, Ivan M. wrote: I would envision taking the existing steps (with a few tweaks here and there) and turning them into a step-by-step wizard-like experience with each step sliding in and out from right to left as it is completed. So, for 'LibreOffice crashes', there would be a separate screen for 'when does LibreOffice crash,' 'Operating System,' etc - maybe with a progress bar to show the user's progress through the process. I think this kind of simplicity and feedback would be a user-friendly way of making this 'technical' process accessible (this would also mean providing help and hints - e.g. how to take a screenshot). I do have one question though: would the submitted form actually submit a bug report in Bugzilla, or would it get sent to someone for moderation/confirmation? Cool idea! I've quickly had a go at a mockup myself (I happen to have just written a scrolly thing, so it was pretty simple. :-) ) which is located here: http://atkinslg.dyndns.org:4080/stuff/wizardmockup.html There are some stub slides in there showing how it could work well even when branching (different sets of questions based on problem type, etc). It already feels very nice, and much simpler. :-) I think the plan was to have it submit directly to bugzilla, but it may well be beneficial to have some sort of moderation. The first step would be to search for similar bugs. IIRC this is (or was) a mandatory step when submitting a Ubuntu bug on Launchpad, and it might help us to do the same. I realize that this is a careful balancing act - making it easy and simple for the end user in order to increase participation, but also not flooding the QA team with poor quality time wasting reports. So, step 1 for me would be that - perhaps in an iframe so that we can offer a link the user can click if they can't find their bug (so that they can proceed) Not sure about how to make it mandatory (probably possible to an extent though). I haven't put the iframe in yet, but that's more because I was busy playing with the other stuff. :-) A good number of these steps involve users submitting data, and I think there should be more disclaimers around that (e.g. please be sure to remove any private or personally identifiable information). We should also inform the person about what's going to happen to their material - will it be available online for others to examine? If so, there may be potential copyright issues. Should be fine to include it every time data has to be submitted now, as it'll still only be one per slide, so not that cluttered. Concerning 'LibreOffice is hard to use', it may be difficult to differentiate between a bug report and a feature request - is it a feature or a bug? We could simply forward these reports (since they could contain very valuable data) to people who are involved with UX (i.e., Christoph's mailbox :P) where that decision can be made more easily. Potential differentiators could include 'LibreOffice doesn't do what I expect,' 'I find it difficult to use a particular feature,' and one or two others. Forwarding should be simple enough, yeah. Though if stuff is moderated, maybe it wouldn't need to distinguish between bugs and feature requests? With website feedback, the range of possible problems could involve display issues, broken links, trouble downloading, typos (if we want to be pedantic - maybe 'wording' might be a better term since it could cover cultural/language issues, or instances where something is not clear) and perhaps (if applicable) user account issues with LibO websites (for now I can only think of the wiki - sure, we have Silverstripe logins, but only for people who have a reasonable idea of what they're doing). Sure. I think with this and the 'hard to use' category, it'll be a while until stuff has to be properly nailed-down, so there's no rush. I'll probably have to chat with some QA people at some point, see what kind of bugs generally come-up. I hope this 'brain dump' helps a little - I think this is something that will steer LibO and its user in the right direction (especially if we include a link to this from within LibO). Regards, Ivan. Sure! Very helpful. :D And it's always good to have a fresh view on things. But yeah, I'm very pleased with the wizard idea. :-) Thanks again, ~ Sam ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
ialog. If a selected font is not installed, then a corresponding message gets shown above the font preview. (Just remembered that we have something like that ...) Ah, ok! That sounds very helpful. I'll have to have a look at that. * LibreOffice is hard to use: Well, also a hard question ... I'll think a bit what kind of question we need here. At the moment, I think Finally: How to finally submit the bug? ;-) Okay, still unanswered questions ... Yeah, it's tricky. I'm sure something will get worked-out eventually! Box "Make the file as small as possible" * Typo in "usually this is th*w* application" * Just to be sure ... would it be helpful to tell people to remove both "confidential and personal" information? Sure, extra clarity can't hurt. Okay, that's what I've found so far ... Thanks! It's always appreciated. :-) (Well, unless I'm having a particularly bad day!) Am Montag, den 28.03.2011, 19:58 +0100 schrieb Samuel Atkins: Hi guys, Sorry if I went a bit quiet about this! I'm still working on it. Current version as always is at: http://atkinslg.dyndns.org:4080/stuff/submitbug.html Currently, the help text stuff appears in a box on the right when the user clicks on a link. I'm not currently loading it from the wiki or anything, though I still think that might be a better idea, to make it easier for people to update/correct it. It'd be better for translation too, I would imagine. True, but the good thing is - at least to me - people can quickly check without leaving the page. Yeah, it's certainly better. I'll see if I can get it to load from the wiki onto the page, if I get time - potentially the best of both worlds. :-) I CCed Ivan who might add his thoughts here ... and there. I know that he's pretty busy at the moment (changes in his private life), but maybe he'll be able to spend some minutes. Hoping for Ivan ;-) If he lacks the time, then we'll CC design / website list. Personally, I fear that I'll be unable to help here, since my private life changes as well - spending time for LibO gets more difficult :-) It's terrible how life gets in the way of things, isn't it! ;-) Thanks, ~ Sam ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
Hi guys, Sorry if I went a bit quiet about this! I'm still working on it. Current version as always is at: http://atkinslg.dyndns.org:4080/stuff/submitbug.html Currently, the help text stuff appears in a box on the right when the user clicks on a link. I'm not currently loading it from the wiki or anything, though I still think that might be a better idea, to make it easier for people to update/correct it. It'd be better for translation too, I would imagine. I've written-up how to get a list of fonts on Win/Mac/Linux. Not sure whether a 'how to install fonts' thing would be useful or needed. As someone who doesn't use a Mac, I had to look-up instructions on the web, so hopefully they're correct. Somewhat related: Is the linux backtrace stuff applicable to Mac OSX? Unanswered questions are highlighted in yellow, which is fairly easy to distinguish, but things still aren't that well organised visually. I've noticed that the Download page uses jQuery, so I could use it to make things slide instead of pop into existence, which might be better. Thoughts? Actually, any graphical mock-ups of how it should look would be useful, if anyone fancies giving it a go. :) It's fairly ugly right now. Otherwise, I'm uncertain where to take the last two 'problem types' - LO being hard to use, and issues related to the website. Maybe the website one could be something like: There is a problem with the website * What kind of problem? () A typo somewhere () Something is out of date () Got sent to a page that doesn't exist * Which site in particular has the problem? () libreoffice.org () documentfoundation.org () The wiki -> Tell the user how a wiki works, that they can amend things? () etc On a different note, I've started on the code for filling-in the bug form, and am a little stuck in a few areas: * What key-words should be added to bug reports, if at all? I saw the keyword 'have-backtrace' appears on bugzilla already, and I'm assuming that would be a sensible one. * How to attach files! Firstly, I don't think you can select a file, and then have the information of which file it was transferred to a separate page. But also at the moment there are various points that ask the user to attach (multiple) files, and I couldn't see anything in the Bugzilla API for submitting additional attachments. Might need some more thought. * Is there some kind of format that the bug-description and summary text should take? I'm having a go at generating the description from what the user selects, but as a newbie I don't know what prefixes and things are used. Well, that was more writing than I expected! And I fear I've forgotten something. Maybe I should just post more often! ~ Sam ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
Hi Michael, On 22/03/2011 7:15 PM, Michael Münch wrote: Hi Samuel, On Monday 21 March 2011 21:53:54 Samuel Atkins wrote: Hello all, I'd like to pick-up this project, as it looks like something I could accomplish! I looked at this task yesterday, so I guess we started at the same time. I have added your name to the task on the easy hacks site in the wiki to prevent double work. Aha! Thank you, and sorry. I was having trouble with the wiki the last couple of days, and couldn't add a 'taken' note, but it now seems to let me edit pages. I hope you didn't spend too long on it. As my javascript already is a huge load of unmaintainable code with probably less than 5 percent of the workflow I am quite happy that you stepped up. Hehe, thanks! I'm not that great at Javascript, but I did manage to write a couple of more general functions than what was there. One technical question. Do you already know how to interact with the bugzilla? I thought of creating the bug with javascript via the xml-rpc api of bugzilla. Some other, and probably nicer apis like JSON or REST seem not to be activated on the freedesktop bugzilla. Ah, I do not know how to interact with bugzilla, so if you do then that would be wonderful. :) I was wondering about using an API in order to attach multiple files to a bug when the user clicks 'submit' -> things like the problem document, and screenshots. It would be very handy if you could work on that type of thing. :) ~ Sam ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
Hi Cristoph, thanks for the quick feedback (in great quantity!) On 21/03/2011 10:41 PM, Christoph Noack wrote: Just a few questions at the beginning: * Is that bug filing form intended to help less experienced users? (Within this mail, I'll assume that). Yes, that's the idea. * Is the formatting of the page final, or will it be embedded in another web page? It's not final. I'm not sure whether it will be embedded into another page, but for the moment I'm not focusing on the appearance of it. At the moment, there are some minor issues and some things that look a bit illogical to me (but this may only be me). So please bear with me when I simply state some of these issues: * When choosing the options, users might miss the information whether they are finished or not. So my proposal would be to state a text / placeholder like "Further information required." and add visual clues (spacing, subtle headings, or ...) between the different questions. 'Further info needed' message sounds good. Maybe unanswered questions should be a different colour to stand out, that'd be pretty simply to implement. * The large heading "Before you file ..." seems to be a heading for the whole page - I'm sure it is not. The whole page is about the bug report (= the heading) and some hints to consider before filing any issue (proposal: a separate box at the top). There, please include the "If you are having more than one problem ..." Yeah, that heading is left-over from the previous person's work, I hadn't got round to changing it. * The whole text seems a bit too technical (assumption: less technical users). There is "#libreoffice IRC", "crash", ODF (on the wiki pages), "bug", ... Thanks, it wouldn't have occurred to me that this was too technical. I'll have a go at making it simpler. * The combination of some entries seems a bit strange, e.g.: * "There is a problem with the website" + "Crashes the program" Hmmm, the website message thing is a bug, that's not meant to be there! * "LibreOffice crashes" + "Does it crash ... load or save ... document? YES" + "Do you need to load a document to execute those steps NO". Yeah, that section needs reorganising. Actually, it probably makes the most sense to have to pick one of "crash when load/save", "crashes when I do these things" and "crashes randomly". * Some helpful hints might be less helpful for users, e.g.: * "If possible, please search the bug reports before ..." --> If the users are less experienced, how and where to do that? If I remember correctly, Gnome let the user enter some terms and then searches within such kind of bug filing form. Looks like a bug-search form should be simple to add. Good idea. * "Are you sure ... fonts installed. Bear in mind ... may list fonts that are not installed". --> How should the user identify what kind of fonts are installed (still, I assume less experienced users). I did try and look for some existing documentation about seeing what fonts are installed/how to install them, but couldn't find any. If anyone knows of any, or could write some, it'd be helpful. :) * "document ... then attach it" --> where? (Maybe it's not yet implemented, but I didn't see the nice placeholders you used elsewhere). Not yet implemented. I'm not yet sure whether picking a file on this page can be used to fill it in on the bugzilla form. Or if going the more ideal route of directly bypassing the form, how to submit multiple files (for instance screenshots as well). However, it looks like Michael Munch might have a better idea of that side. (I'll address that in another post shortly). * Formatting stuff: * The "Description" fields are very small - maybe the problems are small as well, but I think it is helpful to increase the field size a bit. (On my computer, the current size is approx 4x2 cm) * The radio buttons are itself a list, so we might skip the additional bullets. I haven't yet spent time making it look pretty, including these two things. I'll fiddle with the formatting once everything is working. :) * It would be just great if the "For help on this, see here" could just open an additional section below the current section. That would save the users to jump back an forth with the newly opened browser windows. H. It looks like the wiki has an API, so it would be possible to grab sections from the wiki. eg, http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/index.php?action=ren
Re: [Libreoffice] EasyHack: Improved bug filing form / flow
Hello all, I'd like to pick-up this project, as it looks like something I could accomplish! I've had a go on it the last couple of days, and the current page is at http://atkinslg.dyndns.org:4080/stuff/submitbug.html - I'm mostly working from Michael's proposal. I've spoken with him on IRC already, and he gave me a couple more pointers. So this is largely an introduction. So, hello! And of course, if anyone has any input, feel free. ~ Sam (AtkinsSJ on IRC, etc) ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
