As a companion post and follow up to our testing process, I thought it would be useful to help you to help us (should you choose). I’m pretty much stealing these guidelines verbatim from Mozilla because they are clear and concise.
Tell us the precise steps to reproduce the issue you are experiencing
How can a developer reproduce the bug on his or her own computer?
Steps to reproduce are the most important part of any bug report. If a developer is able to reproduce the bug, the bug is very likely to be fixed. If the steps are unclear, it might not even be possible to know whether the bug has been fixed.
Describe your method of interacting with MFI in addition to the intent of each step.
- Imprecise: “I didn’t get my email confirmation”.
- Precise: “I filled out the form to re-request my account verification email and entered my email address user@domain.com and clicked the submit button. It returned with a success confirmation message”.
After your steps, precisely describe the observed result and the expected result. Clearly separate facts (observations) from speculations.
- Imprecise: “It doesn’t work”
- Precise: “Instead of showing my contests, it shows the message ‘Your browser does not support cookies (error -91)’.”
What if my bug seems “random” or “intermittent”?
Writing a clear summary
How would you describe the bug using approximately 10 words? This is the first part of your bug report a developer will see.
A good summary should quickly and uniquely identify a bug report. It should explain the problem, not your suggested solution.
- Good: “Clicking ‘Allow’ button to broadcast my webcam crashes the browser”
- Bad: “It crashes”
- Good: “I am unable to upload the attached image using when using Internet Explorer 7″
- Bad: “I cant upload pics”
We LIKE screenshots a LOT. We LOVE screencasts even more since it gives us a very precise representation of exactly what you did, how you did it, and what the result was. This is by far the most effective way in helping us to help you. Check out Screenr.com for a free and easy way to create screencasts.
