313467 - Add "Formatting Help" information near input comment boxes, describing e.g. autolinkification

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: Documentation, enhancement)

Description

[Hermann Schwab]

If you use the linkification feature of Bugzilla, the reports are looking better and supply more info, as hovering over a bug link give it's title.

A lot of people don't know that comment 0 of Bug 312495 links to this description, but Bug 312495 comment 0 links to where it was intended.

Bug 312495
crash when exiting a page with Java Bubble viewer

is looking better than

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312495

Bugs 312495 and 313459 won't do it, Bug 312495 and  Bug 313459 will do.

Talkback Records can be linked as TB10667268W, TB10667268 or copied from the fastfind page as Incident ID: 10667268

If you want to link to a testcase, let's say https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=153601
the result is looking better if you edit a bit:
attachment 153601 [details]

I would suggest placing a link to a helpfile right above or below the textbox where you enter your comment, Description when creating a bug, Additional Comments when commenting.



Maybe there also should be a explanation how to attach files, and a link to what to attach, not megabyte-sized word docs, but gifs, pngs, preferrably not bmps. A link how to make testcases, a link to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talkback also would be fine.
May be a link to landfill.bugzilla.org, if people just want to test, will help too.

I'm also missing a link to new features, like Clone Bug, maybe on top of a general bugzilla helpfile. Don't know if this can be preproduced by bugzilla and edited by mozilla.org to fit bugzilla.mozilla.org.

Comment 1

[Elmar Ludwig]

see also bug 243549

Comment 2

[Frédéric Buclin]

There is now a "Help" link when viewing a bug, but the doc pointed by it doesn't say anything about linkification. We could probably improve this section a bit.

Comment 3

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Bugzilla 3.2 is now frozen. Only enhancements blocking 3.2 or specifically approved for 3.2 may be checked in to the 3.2 branch. If you would like to nominate your enhancement for Bugzilla 3.2, set the "blocking3.2" flag to "?", and either the target milestone will be changed back, or the blocking3.2 flag will be granted, if we will accept this enhancement for Bugzilla 3.2.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: UI Proposal: Add [?] link above description/comment input boxes

Please find a mockup UI attached, as proposed by comment #0.
In the next comment, I'll also include a full draft version of the proposed help file on linkification.

Actually, I think the original idea of this bug as proposed by comment #0 would be really great to have, even for advanced users: Add a small [?] link in the upper right corner of the input boxes for description/comment. So users can access the help about linkification easily when they actually need it most. I still remember that it actually took me quite long to fully understand the mechanisms of auto-linkification. I am still sometimes wondering if I need to add the # character before numbers, or the comma between bug and comment, or not.

Adding this would be a simple change of great benefit at virtually no cost.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Full draft version of the proposed help file on linkification

Here's a full draft version of the proposed help file. Clicking on the [?] above the description/comment box would link to this file.

Add some Mozilla layout to this, and you're done. Courtesy of Thomas. :)

Comment 6

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Comment on attachment 414952 [details]
Full draft version of the proposed help file on linkification

This looks basically pretty good. Of course, you also want to mention that URLs will be auto-linkified as well.

The next thing to do would be to submit a patch and follow our development process described here:

  http://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Developers

Comment 7

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Comment on attachment 414951 [details]
UI Proposal: Add [?] link above description/comment input boxes

Instead of [?], let's call it something more descriptive, like "Help on Formatting". If you want to have a pop-up div, it will have to be shorter than the proposed text--perhaps just the auto-linkification table, that would be small enough for a pop-up.

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Merging this bug's summary with the duplicate bug 476123 summary provided by Max Kanat-Alexander (and some extra search words to improve retrievability and avoid further duplicates).

Comment 10

[Hermann Schwab]

Breakpad UUID 5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226 will be linkified if written as bp-5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226

Comment 11

[Hermann Schwab]

Seems breakpad reports don't need user effort to be autolinkified

naked number: 5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226 (without UUID-Prefix)  

Prefix UUID with a space: UUID 5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226
Prefix UUID without a space: UUID5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226
Prefix UUID with tab, as copied from report: UUID	5d9dddd4-fba4-46e2-86f9-832092091226

Comment 12

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Those breakpad highlights are bmo customizations, though, so they wouldn't be documented in upstream Bugzilla.

Comment 13

[Frédéric Buclin]

We are going to branch for Bugzilla 4.4 next week and this bug is either too invasive to be accepted for 4.4 at this point or shows no recent activity. The target milestone is reset and will be set again *only* when a patch is attached and approved.

I ask the assignee to reassign the bug to the default assignee if you don't plan to work on this bug in the near future, to make it clearer which bugs should be fixed by someone else.

Comment 14

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Once we support Markdown, we'll definitely need a "Formatting Help" option, so we could start with one now that detailed the autolinkification rules.

Gerv

Comment 15

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Autolinkification is now documented here:
http://bugzilla.readthedocs.org/en/latest/using/tips.html#autolinkification
as is Markdown, but that itself is not linked from near the comment box.

Gerv