Simpler form to file bugs in Bugzilla 3.4 24 mai 2009
Posted by Frédéric Buclin in Bugzilla, Mozilla.trackback
In my previous post, I talked about the new front page which will be used in Bugzilla 3.4 (it will very likely change again in Bugzilla 3.6 to look something like this). Now I’m going to talk about the new form to file bugs. Technically, it’s the same page as before, but we now hide some fields by default which we don’t consider to be critical when reporting a new bug.
The form to file bugs in Bugzilla 3.2 and older looks like this:
Full bug filing form
There are many fields which advanced users probably love to see when reporting a new bug, but they may look too complicated for newbies. With the idea that newbies know mostly nothing about the internals of Bugzilla, and that they probably won’t know what to set, we know display important fields only, by default:
Simple bug filing form
The information requested here seems small enough to not frighten new reporters. We could even imagine hidding the OS + hardware fields, as well as the component field, but I suppose the form would then look a bit too much like Hendrix. Anyway, it’s still a big improvement over what Bugzilla 3.2 displays to the user. And before you ask: yes, you can display all fields if you want to. Simply click the “Show Advanced Fields” link at the top of the page. Bugzilla will store your choice in a cookie so that you don’t have to worry about it in the future. Cool, isn’t it? 
In my next post, I will show you how administrators can configure Bugzilla 3.4 to display some fields under certain circumstances only (for instance, on a per-product basis, or only for a given severity/priority, etc…) Another cool feature. 
Can I, as a user, edit my prefs to always show the advanced fields when I’m logged in? That would make it nice and easy to have it work from multiple computers and browsers
No, we don’t plan to add a user pref for this. It’s a single click to display all fields, and I doubt you use a new browser every day.
The fields left in (version, severity, hardware, OS) are the least useful fields on bugzilla.mozilla.org. They never help with prioritization, rarely help with searching, and usually contain incorrect information. Maybe they’re useful in other installations, but on BMO they’re noise. TidyBug hides them.
I use many of the other fields on the new-bug page (CC, keywords, dependencies) but I agree that hiding them makes sense.
I don’t like the way Bugzilla keeps some prefs in cookies (especially bug list columns). It’s a pain whenever I switch browsers, switch computers, or clear cookies. It’s marginally useful for having my iPhone show fewer columns, but using browser-specific cookies seems to be the wrong way to do that. I can’t think of any other sites that do that.
Whilst I welcome the option to reduce the number of fields, hardware and OS are pretty useless and I want to have some custom fields showing all the time – that’s why they’re custom.
Off now to see if there’s some hack that means custom fields are always shown..
I would be looking for exactly the same thing right now. Is there a way to add the custom field in the list of fields included in the “simple” bug report?
As Peter said, these fields are custom because they are useful, hence we would be grateful if they were included in the simple report. As it stands right now, pretty much everyone has to use the Advanced form because these fields are important to us…
Thanks,
Julien
The Simple display means that the default assignee is always chosen, as it is not displayed, is there any way to add this in?
Hi,
you said you would tell us how to show/hide fields when creating a bug, but I can’t find anywhere this post ?
Could you please tell me where to find it ?
Thanks,
“In my next post, I will show you how administrators can configure Bugzilla 3.4 to display some fields under certain circumstances only”
Still waiting for this post!
You are both right, I promised to write an article about custom fields, and I didn’t yet. I will do it in the coming days!