Simpler form to file bugs in Bugzilla 3.4
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!
Could I ask you a question about Bugzilla??? We have been using it for about 6 months and really do like the functionality within the application. Recently we are having issues where it seems the browser is holding bug number in cache and when trying to enter a new bug we are getting "You already used the form to file bug XXXX" This can be after a complete reboot of the pc. It is impossible for the user to enter a new bug because it refers them back to the last bug they were able to successfully enter. We are stuck, can you advise us as to what cookie or how this is being held so we could clear it for this user. They were able to enter tickets up until they cleared all history and cookies from their machine, then this started. May not have been related but strange that they cannot get the cache to write a new number for assignment.
Bugzilla uses a token to avoid duplicated bug reports. If the user uses the same page again and again, this would explain why he gets the error you mentioned. But if the user clicks "New" to file another bug report, then there is no reason to get this message.
You wrote the custom fields … but I don’t see how it relates directly to simple and advanced bug entry.
Unfortunately the "Field only appears when: …" option when editing the custom fields isn’t the solution for most peoples problem to show a custom field in simple mode.
A "Can be set on bug creation in simple mode:" boolean would be nice…
instead of writing another response on that i maybe should rather look into the code to change it, i know…
This basic bug entry template can be edited to show custom fields, as described here: http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.bugzilla/browse_thread/thread/9c7b97f123d587b3?pli=1