Bugzilla Extensions: Gravatar and Inline Images

There are 2 bugs which I have been paying some attention to recently.

The first one is Bug 222861 which requests that images are displayed when they are mentioned in comments. This bug was important to me because I often found myself and others referring to images and attachments in comments and then having to open them up in a new window. I really wanted developers to just see the mocks i made along with my comments about them. It was determined that this bug makes more sense as an extension. So I wrote one. I've posted it here: http://github.com/pyrzak/Bugzilla-Extension--Inline-Images. Hopefully you guys like it!

The second one is Bug 395802 which requests to be able to support gravatar images. This is something Aza Raskin specifically mentioned by saying make it easier to know "who is this guy". Step 1 is adding a human face to a comment via the gravatar, Step 2 might be about grabbing their stats.

There were 2 mocks that I made as suggestions for how this should look. The first is:

Here is the other mock:

My hope is that we're finally to the point where many of Aza's and other's ideas might be possible thanks to the new extension system and the jsonp bug 550727. Both of which wouldn't be possible if mkanat didn't work so hard to add this kind of mash-up and extensibility, so thanks!

Any feedback about either of these extensions or anything else I mentioned is very welcomed.

New Advanced Search UI V2

Here is the second version trying to take into account the suggestions given.

This UI would remember whatever is expanded and collapsed based on the user's cookies.

Another option that isn't displayed here is the column layout would change from 3 to X based on how wide the screen is (aka elastic).

I tried to increase the information density as well.

For saved/editable searches we might try to use the text description from the search UI.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback about the changes and improvements.

A new layout for the Attachments page

There were some comments today about the attachments page and how wonky it is. Bug 101770 has become the place where I've decided to post a response and possible solution to the problem but since I'm sure folks don't want to bother going to the bug here are the images that I posted. Let me know what you think. My hope is that we'll be able to implement this new UI quickly and make a big improvement without making anyone too upset about losing the current Attachments UI.



Things to note. The comments box and the attachment iframe would be elastic so they would grow with the width of the page. Clicking edit attachment as comment would cause the comment box to go away and the big area would turn into a comment.

My hope for this layout is to 1 give more realestate to the comment box that is equal to the area on the current bug page as well as make it easier for people editing the patches directly to have more room.

This UI also puts the focus where it belongs, on the attachment itself.

Things to note. I'm not at all happy with the placement of the patch and obsolete checkboxes. Any suggestions on where those should go is greatly appreciated.

Make it like code.google.com's bug tracker

For a while we've been having discussions about tags and Bugzilla on the dev mailing list. To boil down a lot of the suggestion it consists of "we could do away with most of our fields/flags and replace them with tags, it would make the UI way better".

We've also had other discussions about how the bug edit page should change. Many of the suggestions consist of moving the non-comment data about a bug to the left or right side of the page and letting the comments take up most of the page.

Today (for the first time) i went into the code.google.com (cgc) bug tracker to see what the status of tagging was in chrome. Turns out both of these UI suggestions are exactly how chrome is implemented. I event went to the advanced search page to see if the suggestions i received from the advanced search page were the same (they weren't).

Anyway, i've received the message loud and clear "we like how google did it".

I'm tempted to make a jetpack that makes the BMO UI act/look a lot more like cgc. What do you guys think? Is it worth it or is TidyBug more the direction people prefer?

If you haven't seen cgc here is the URL i looked at today: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=17536

Tidy Bugzilla for Jetpack... kinda

So I saw the post for TidyBug and noticed someone commented that they switched back to Greasemonkey from Jetpack. I really like the idea of Jetpack, so i was bummed to see that someone had switch away from it because they wanted this feature so... I tried copying some of the features of tidyBug over to Jetpack.

Here is the URL for the jetpack in the gallery: http://jetpackgallery.mozillalabs.com/jetpacks/346

and an image to see what it does to the edit page...



For those of you who are not familiar with tidy bug here is the original post:
http://www.squarefree.com/2009/02/26/tidybug/

I'm still working on moving over all the features (like keyboard shortcuts). But the minimizing (what seems to be the best part) is part of this. Plus this version works with ANY version of Bugzilla running 3.4 onward, not just BMO.

For those using Chrome I might try to port this over as a chrome extension next weekend.

I'll also try using jetpack to prototype some other desired features, like prototyping the quicksearch helper mentioned in my previous post.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Update to the Advanced Search UI

We've been working on fixes from our usability research and surveys. With the recent post of Bugzilla for Humanity, I was inspired to work on the Advanced Search UI because as Johnathan put it, "it is complete and terrible" and for "99% of searches you don't need it". However the other search, the simple search he doesn't bother to mention and of course he <3's quicksearch. I've filed bug 544404 to help quicksearch magic become more discoverable.

So the solution to make the advanced search page less complicated is a multi-parter as always in the Bugzilla world. Here are the steps which may or may not happen in the order they appear.

Step 1. Make the big summary box at the top of the page use quicksearch instead of a summary search.

Step 2. Make the other boxes on the advanced search page work as a helper to the quicksearch

Step 3. Make the advanced search page less complicated.

1 and 2 are more or less out of my area expertise so I'll leave those to mkanat and jjclark. But making the advanced search page less complicated, I can help with.

The approach I took was inspired by the redesign we did at work, basically apply a grid and hide the stuff that doesn't matter most of the time.

I've posted mocks up on bug 450301 but since I'm sure no one wants to read through the bug I'll post the images here:


and the expanded version


What do you all think?

Jira Vs Bugzilla

Today a co-worker sent me a link for Jira's Cash for Clunkers, a way to get the word out for the next release. At first I thought my co-worker was trying to say "hey we should use JIRA" (turns out he wasn't). But I think this is a thought lots of people have when it comes to picking bug/issue trackers. And I honestly don't think it is free to compare. In my mind it is like comparing the public library to the book store.

I love the public library. I get to go in and grab any book they have and read it for free(I pretend my taxes don't count)! Wow. That's amazing. But that's assuming someone hasn't checked out the book i want. Sometimes i have to wait for a book and sometimes I am too impatient and i just buy it from the Bookstore.

See the Bookstore has tons of books, not as large of a variety, but usually they have what i want. Often if I want a book they don't have, I can ask for it and they work hard to get it for me asap. Plus, i don't get some crappy fees if I'm late returning the book, because its mine.

I feel like the same thing is true of JIRA to Bugzilla. They are both great bug trackers, but their nature is totally different. You pay for JIRA (unless you're an open source tool) and no one (not even Mozilla) pays to support the development of Bugzilla. Lots of organizations and individuals donate time when they can, but there isn't any money being exchanged from a "bugzilla org" to other folks.

I feel like this by itself makes the comparison not exactly fair. Now if that philosophy isn't an issue and neither is money.

JIRA's UI is cleaner/nicer but not as geared around power users in many people's opinion, but it doesn't support the patch review process as nicely.

To be clear i've used both systems. There are PLENTY of super annoying little things (which maybe jira fixed in this next release). But as someone who has now come to understand JIRA really well and its limitations and understanding bugzilla and its limitations, I'd pick Bugzilla, but most people I work with, prefer JIRA every time.

Maybe JQL will fix the biggest JIRA issue, advanced search, but in the end, I like bugzilla because although admin UI for bugzilla is weird, I honestly find it easier to use (once I understand the mental model) than JIRAs. Oh... also, JIRA's email system makes me want to shoot somone, can't add other people to cc lists, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to turn off emails for specific bugs, it seems like some crazy all the things in a project or none... but that's again a personal issue.

But I'll continue to use JIRA at work, and figure out how to make work-arounds for "adding others to the cc-list" and other issues. But if you're reading this post as a way to find the answer to this question. Ask yourself this: is money not an issue? Do I have lots of novices using this tool? If the answer is yes to both of those, JIRA might be the way to go.

If you've got experts who will live with this tool every day, would prefer emacs, the command line and grep to Office, and want to be able to hack and slash their way to happiness... Bugzilla is probably your solution.

UPDATE ... Search is still horrible! doing a search for a bug with a specific owner between 2 relative dates results in "error" with no error message. OMG i miss Bugzilla. Plus quicksearch in bugzilla is GREAT @username gets me all their open bugs done... jira not so much. :(

my 2 cents