Streamlining bugs.kde.org

Datschge datschge at gmx.net
Wed Apr 30 23:33:06 UTC 2003


Hello KDE mailing lists members,

I've been bug hunting on b.k.o for the last couple of weeks and really like 
the technical features of bugzilla and the custom KDE interface. But I still 
thought that we can make it even better improving the usability and 
understandability. So I went ahead last week and changed a couple of 
templates together with Daniel Naber who also fixed further ones of them and 
committed all changes promptly (thank you!).

Following are the changes we did:

[Header] Links are now a little more descriptive.

[Front page] Added a whole bunch of imo useful links and "tools", changed its 
grouping and ordering to reflect their popularity and importance. I 
personally would like to emphasise the importance of the newly added "idling 
open reports" tool near the bottom of the front page. It will allow everyone 
to easily thin the huge amount of old bug and wish reports which are often 
obsolete for some time already and can be easily closed as soon as someone is 
aware of them.

[Actions panel] Changed "Edit prefs" and "Log out (username)" into complete 
links instead only parts of them.

[Bug pages] Completely "redesigned" the "bug list" navigation. "Query page" 
and "Enter new bug" has been removed since they are in the "Location" line at 
the top already. The number of the current bug, the whole amount of bugs in 
the current list and a link to that list has been combined in one easy to 
understand sentence. "First" and "Previous" now appear together on the left 
and "Next" und "Last" on the right edge and are shown respectively 
deactivated on the first and last bug page. Furthermore the top right infobox 
now also contain the numbers of votes including links to an overview over all 
casted votes as well as to vote yourself. "View Bug Activity" and "Format For 
Printing" don't show up big anymore, and the attachment table at the bottom 
resembles the infobox now.

[Query page] Tried uncluttering the page without removing features. Every 
feature is represented in logical sections. Now we can have some discussion 
what features can be combined/removed and how to add features like full text 
search etc. =)

[Search result page] Made Time/Date display friendly. ;) Made Bugzilla's 
"little mind message" more useful by suggesting to edit the existing search 
to narrow down the result including a link back. Reworded and reorganized 
navigation links now shown at the top and the bottom (good for long lists).

[Vote page] Added link back to bug page on casted votes pages, added text both 
at the top and the bottom and button after the text on personal votes page.

What else I personally would like to see improved:

* Logging in should bring you back to the point where you decided to log in, 
not to the complex query page. (Bugzilla issue, see 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83044 )
* The Bug Report Wizard should show the number of steps necessary to finish a 
report and at what point the user is.
* Searching for duplicates in the wizard should be done early in instead later 
on.
* Extend "weekly summary" to include links to each product's chart and 
wishlist making it an even better starting point for getting product specific 
stats and bugs.
* Make "report ownership counts and charts" look more pleasing and logical and 
remove non-working "most recently doomed" entry (or is its purpose intended 
to be unknown for users like me?).

I hope you like those changes and am looking forward to hearing your comments 
and suggestions. Thank you for your attention.

Best regards, Datschge =)


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