Adding “Report a bug” to the Flash Player
filed in Feature Request, Flash Player, bugs.adobe.com on Feb.10, 2010
So I’ve finally added my first feature request to the Flash Player in Adobe’s Bug and Database Management System. I’ve voted on quite a number of bugs and features, but never added added my own feature before.
It’s issue #FP-3889: “In the right-click context menu include a link to the player’s bug system”. So that users could see in the context menu something like “Report a Flash Player bug” which goes to http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
I think making more of the general public aware of the bug system would result in catching more bugs, which would result in a better Flash Player. I don’t think that the Flash Player is nearly as bad as many complain that it is, but I think this would be helpful. It could even help the image of the Flash Player to those who think it’s buggy.
Perhaps a step further would be to help less technical people in reporting bugs and include a Flash Player version detection that filled in the form with their version number, browser and operating system. It would also obviously mention if their Flash Player was out of date.
I’ve thought this would be a good feature for quite some time but finally got around to submitting it, as I got thinking about reporting bugs because of Ted Patrick’s recent campaign to get more Flash developers to report bugs in the Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 betas. Which is great, as I unfortunately still come across a few Flash and Flex developers and quite a number of Flash designers who aren’t even aware of bugs.adobe.com. Perhaps adding this to the context menu would not only help the general public more aware of the bug database, but could also make more of the Flash community aware of it.
So please vote for issue #FP-3889. If you don’t already have an account Adobe’s Issue database, and you are a Flash developer or designer, do yourself a favour and take the time to create an account. Not for the purpose of voting for my feature request (as that would be nice) but so that you can influence the future of the Flash Player (plus Flex SDK, BladeDS and more) plus bring attention to any bugs you might have come across.
February 12th, 2010 on 10:23 am
Wholeheartedly agree.
But would it not be better to have that option available only for the Debug version of the player? Automatic crash reporting is one thing (which I commented on in a a related post), but if every ‘lay’ user were to have the ability to post directly to the Adobe bugbase, the quality of bug reports and comments might get quite diluted with copies and “mee too” posts, since most users would not have the desire nor discipline to first search whether there may already be a relevant bug report for their issue.
Which of course, someone from Adobe must spend considerable time combing through. Given Adobe’s history of attention to bug requests, my fear is that even less attention would get paid to fixing bugs and more time spent managing the bug system.
Which raises an interesting question: is Adobe’s recent move to open up the bugbase to non-registered users just a PR move in response to recent criticism at the perceived stability of the Flash Player, or a genuine attempt at improving their reporting statistics? Only time will tell.
February 12th, 2010 on 1:02 pm
Adobe’s Bug and Issue Database used to be open up to the public, but they closed it down while they were upgrading the system.
Personally, I don’t think this should be limited to the debug version of the Flash Player, as I do think it would be beneficial to get bugs from the general public outside of the Flash community. Especially since the general public are likely running slower and less fine tuned computers. Better web companies QA their applications on older computers, but it’s been my experience that they are generally in the minority and it’s not something done nearly enough. Even then few companies can cover the huge range of configurations that is only growing these days as Flash gets on more mobile devices.
Also I think it’s the more technically inclined who will likely take the time to create an account and file a bug. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more noise from bugs from the public, but I think it would be worth it for bugs that might not have been caught normally.