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A New Way to Report Bugs

September 16, 2011

Today we are launching a new bug tool to replace Bugzilla which will help us get even faster and more efficient at fixing bugs. It is integrated into the Dev Site and uses your Facebook login so you no longer need to have a separate account to use it (as was the case with Bugzilla).

Get started by clicking on Bugs on the Support Page. When you land in the tool you will see the top 20 most active bugs (“Trending”). In most cases, this view should contain the bug you are looking for. If you do not find the bug you are looking for here, start a search and choose a tag, title, or phrase related to the issue you’re seeing.

A filtered list of all open bugs that include that tag or phrase will be shown. You can add multiple tags or phrases to continue narrowing your search results. If you are not quite sure what tags to use to further scope your search, click a tag from the list of tags on the left menu. This list contains all the tags found on the bugs in your search result along with the number of bugs in your search with that tag.

Once you have found the bug you are experiencing, you can subscribe to it to receive emails whenever new activity occurs on it (e.g. it’s been fixed), see other developers who are having the same problem, let us know that you’re seeing the same problem, or discuss workarounds in the comments.

If you can’t find the bug you are experiencing, click the “Create” button to file a new bug report. In the bug report, you must provide steps we can follow to reproduce the issue along with the IDs and access tokens you are using when you see the bug occur. Having this information up front helps us more quickly reproduce this issue and figure out what is happening in order to fix the bug as quickly as possible.

You will notice a few other features when you try it out and we expect that this will be a significant improvement over Bugzilla that will help you find and stay better informed about the bugs that affect you.

Today we are making Bugzilla read-only. We will continue to triage and fix the open bugs in Bugzilla, but all new bugs should be filed in the new tool. If you find any issues with the new bug tool itself, file a bug for us with the “bug tool” tag. We are actively working on adding more improvements to the bug tool and would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.

Special thanks to Dylan Hadfield-Menell, our product management intern this summer, for all his help building the new bug tool.


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