A giant bug list (and a few feature requests)

[Chris]

Forum URL: forum.sz-ex.com/

I encountered all of these bugs while trying to convert the above site to v5. I've used imgur.com to host the screenshots to inline them as links.

Some of them are things that might qualify as UX or missing features, but I consider those to be bugs.

For all of these, I am using Chrome Version 31.0.1650.63 on OS X 10.7.5.  I have not explicitly tested other browsers, etc.

Big thanks to Benjamin for helping me find all these.


Admin Panel - Plugin + Member Selection

In a plugin with a "Forum Search" of type "Member" and "Multiple Answers" set to "no," it gets very confusing.

1. It tells me I can "Add Members," which is plural.  I can add only one.
2. Clicking "Add Members" opens a popup, but it does not auto-focus the user selection box.  It should auto-focus that box.
3. After selecting a user using my keyboard, I can not hit enter to close the tab automatically.
4. I can't hit escape to close that popup after selecting a user.  I have to click on the box and then hit escape.
5. If I use the popup to delete a selected user and then add another (without closing), the box changes to a darker color.  Inspecting the CSS, it thinks it's now "even" instead of odd.

Admin Panel - Analytics

First of all, I love this addition.  Thank you so much for adding it.  I apologize if some of my requests sound ridiculous.

1. When you enter too large of a timerange (like, 3 months or so), there is no warning and it just silently renders a smaller subset.  Please visualize this error.
2. The date selection box is smaller than the entered date. Screenshot
3. There is no explanation that the cutoff for a date is UTC.  At some point, I was posting and not seeing updates to the count and was confused, because...
4. The page should let you know that the -current- day is not shown OR it should show it as "Today"
5. I can view dates in the future.  This doesn't make much sense, except for the concept of "Today"
6. Maybe for days from before v5 conversion, it should explain that the information for posts/members/threads wasn't available instead of showing 0.  (Especially since it shows the page views from that time - Example of what it looks like currently)
7. Entering an invalid date should tell me which field.  This is because I edited it, did something else for five minutes, and came back and forgot to notice which field I was in.  Screenshot of error
8. REQUEST: Show me how far back you have data for
9. REQUEST: Give me a summary by week, month, and year.  (Month and year preferred to weekly to start)
10. REQUEST: Give me patterns.  Do I see trends for certain times of the day?  Days of the week?
11. REQUEST: Find a way to show which days had events, for pattern reasons
12. REQUEST: Make the date range of analytics persistent by URL. i.e. if I share the link or refresh, I should see the same graph (but with updated numbers.) This is useful for sharing time ranges or getting live updates.  It can be done by using a hash easily enough.
    

Admin Panel - Member Groups Page

1. REQUEST: Please show the number of members per group.  I have multiple groups with the same name, but different member counts (because of v4).  I'll likely keep this for different permissions, but I have no clue which is which...
2. REQUEST: Please add a row highlight.  There's a lot of moving parts in a large group list, so it's harder to make sure I have the right group.
3. REQUEST: Whenever someone has a dangerous power (deletion or similar), please make the permission bar red.
4. Deleting a group does not require me to type "delete" like many other things.
5. Deleting a group does not EXPLICITLY tell me which group I'm deleting.
6. Deleting a group does not warn me if members are in the group NOR does it tell me what will happen if I delete the group.
7. It is not clear what effect order of groups has on anything.  I'd note it in the page description or add a question mark box to the sort column.
8. There is no way to explicitly save after clicking the header to re-order.  I must then drag and drop something after clicking a header to save the new order.  (This may apply to any autoform instead.)

Admin Panel - Theme Manager + Settings

1. On /admin/themes, the Theme Manager pictures is wrong.  That is a picture of Theme Settings, yet I was explicitly trying to find "that page with the list of templates" which is actually Theme Manager.  I'd either add a separate link or update the preview since it doesn't take you to Theme Settings.
2. When viewing Theme Settings, you get there via the Theme Manager, but the breadcrumbs/nav tree doesn't actually include that page, so there's no easy way to get back.

WYSIWYG

1. If you're typing in bold text, it'll show that as active above the editor.  Inside a font size or a font family, it does not.  This is inconsistent and forces me to switch to the BBCode tab to remember what size/family I was using.
2. If you paste something and then try to use cmd+z to undo that paste, it won't.  It undoes your last edit.
3. If you're inside strikethrough text and hit enter inside a list, it creates a new line but not a new bullet.  May apply to any formatting.
   
4. If you hit "Clear Formatting" at the end of formatted text and start typing without clicking, it'll still use the formatting you just cleared.  You have to manually undo it.
5. Open "Add List" popup.  Hit tab to switch from 3 items to the type menu... and I can't tell where my focus went, but definitely not to the menu.
6. If I hit enter to get new lines at the bottom, the scrollbar does not continue downward.  It does continue downward if I was typing at every line.
7. (General UBBC) If you quote a post that has an extra UBBC end tag, it adds an extra quota endtag.  (Entered UBBC, Result)
8. Auto-linking is not shown in Preview, but is done on post.  This is misleading.
9. Copying and pasting from another PB WYSIWYG loses formatting.
   
10. Clicking "Spell Check" hits my popup blocker.  I believe in this case window.open() either errors or returns false.  (Either way, it's possible to detect.)  I'd suggest showing a message to a user saying their popup blocker blocked it.
11. In PMs, when you quote a forum post to a user and are NOT the user being quoted (i.e. the quoted user is not in the conversation), the tag shows @admin instead of translating to their name. This is different from what you see in the preview though, where it shows it accurately.
    
12. It's possible to insert a URL around another URL.  This should either be an illegal state or allow you to edit the existing URL...
13. ... on that note, you can't edit the URL of an inserted link.  I'd expect double clicking or the above URL strategy to work.
14. If I'm highlighting text to insert a URL around it, it should default focus to the URL box instead of the text box
15. When I tag someone using the dropdown menu (via UBBC), it inserts "@admin" instead of the user's link until I update the preview.
16. I have a list of links.  I go to the start of the first link and hit enter to insert a new bullet point.  Instead, I get a long line break (inserting a div I think) and no new bullet.  Without the URL formatting on the link it does insert a new bullet.

General Admin Panel Stuff

1. Manage Plugins.  When I'm editing settings, if I hit "enter" in an input box, it should save as if I submitted the form.  (For better UX, it should be treated like a real form and actually reload the page.)
2. REQUEST: Template Settings - I love having the member count, but can I click it and see a list of members using the template?  This would allow me to solicit feedback on skins or warn a small subset of members of upcoming changes to the skin.  (I also can't find -any- way to tell what skin a member is using from an admin's perspective.)  This also helps me debug bugs reported to me by knowing which template they're using.
3. Headers/footers backups from v4 have the wrong deletion date: "They are for your reference and will not display on your forum. Auto Deletes: December 1st, 2013"
   

Admin Panel - Categories/Boards Management

1. After selecting a board/category, clicking it again or on something else should actually deselect it.  (I'm fine with just clicking it again to deselect.)
2. On the edit board/category popup, go to the Permissions tab.  Click any dropdown, use the arrow keys to start navigating, now hit "enter" to try and select an item.  It should only select the item.  Instead, it closes the popup and sometimes doesn't even save the updated value.  This is inconsistent with expected web UX and also with other parts of the PB system (i.e. Search page)
3. REQUEST: Please add a "Go to Board" link on the board row.  If the board is hidden, I shouldn't need to open the popup and navigate to another tab to get the link.  (Default it to opening in a new window too.)
4. REQUEST: When hovering over a board, can you please show the board's description?  It's helpful for double checking things quickly.
5. When trying to position a board at the end of a category after a board with sub-boards, it is very unintuitive to have to drop it next to the parent board instead of below the bottom-most sub-board.  I would use the horizontal position of the mouse to try to show where the board will be inserting (i.e. at what depth)
6. Normally when you hover over a board, you see the posts/threads.  If you edit a board's settings and then hover again, the stats are gone.
7. If you edit a setting, hit escape to close the popup, and then try to leave the page, it warns you that you have unsaved settings.  It is impossible to recover these settings anyways, so it shouldn't.  (Also, I think if you open another box and do it again, you actually get two confirmations.)

Members Page

1. "View Birthdays" doesn't describe accurate behavior.  It should be "View Today's Birthdays"
2. I get to this URL via the calendar page: forum.sz-ex.com/members?day=23&month=1&view=birthdays_other_day   I then switch to a different view ("view all").  I use the back button to go back, but it doesn't load this page.

Moving Threads

1. When moving multiple threads at once, there is no clear separation between the threads in the thread list.  Also, by default, there is no underline on the links, so it is very difficult to tell where one starts and one ends.  I would like them either as a list or with a comma between them.  The list poses issues with moving 5k threads in a board, so the comma strategy is probably best.
2. REQUEST: When moving threads, I did "Select All" and then tried to move them.  I didn't realize this selected the announcements too (I wouldn't have expected that when my goal was to move/clean a board.)  Please explicitly point out that announcements are selected.  (NOTE: Great job having it put the "moved thread" post in the right board! )
3. Clicking a link from the thread list when moving threads should either open in a new window or confirm that you'll lose your selection.
4. In an action menu, when you click on a parent of a sub-menu, it closes the menu.  This behavior is consistent with dropdown menus in both OSX and Windows.  (Put here because I did while clicking "Move")

General Bugs

No use making a large category for one-offs.

1. Some old links aren't converted from v4 -> v5.  SZ uses a lot of action=gotothread, which does nothing.  See forum.sz-ex.com/?action=gotothread&thread=4262 or forum.sz-ex.com/index.cgi?action=gotothread&thread=4262  (It should take you to the homepage, as the bug.)
2. ACP REQUEST: When creating a custom page and giving it a title, it should automatically try to create a nice ID for me.  
3. ACP REQUEST: Ability to edit the template for the error page.  forum.sz-ex.com/page/abc123  The style doesn't match the rest of the forum.
4. Error page doesn't load a user's plugin keys.  (Putting this here for now. It may just be my usage though.)
5. It's impossible to access the same proboards.com home page when logged in as it is while logged out.  I want to access it during both times.  (Maybe I'm just blind.)
6. The default micro-profile template does not take into account guests/superusers. (I didn't check guest; only superuser. Example) This is a post by Martyn's v4 superuser that was converted. The micro-profile just needs to check for $[user.username] existing outside of the parens to fix this.
   
7. Quotes of superusers from v4 do not convert properly. Also, superuser's are listed as guests, whether or not that should be correct. (They do have stars... they just are labeled as guests. Example)
   
8. "Mark Boards as Read" doesn't clear "new" marker for Participated Threads
   
9. If I view the only thread that was "new" in Participated Threads, Participated Threads still shows "new" even though if I open it there is nothing "new."  The mark as read function should probably clear this message and then recalculate "new"
10. If a post is edited by a staff member and a tag is added, it says the original creator tagged you instead of that staff member.
11. forum.sz-ex.com/search/results?what_at_least_one=studio&when_days=10&who_only_made_by=0&display_as=1  No matter what I do, at least one of the threads here is marked as "new" even though I've read it.  Multiple times.  (Benjamin found this one.)

[Tim Camara]

Your post reminds me of this scene.

[Chris]

Jan 3, 2014 8:38:15 GMT -8 Tim Camara said:

Your post reminds me of this scene.

I haven't gotten over the wall yet.  Want me to keep going?

[Chris]

Another request: (Adding above in about 10s)
Please make the date range of analytics persistent. i.e. if I share the link or refresh, I should see the same graph (but with updated numbers.) This is useful for sharing time ranges.

[David Clark]

I .... I-I can't even ...

[Chris]

Got another one.

In PMs, when you quote a forum post to a user and are NOT the user being quoted (i.e. the quoted user is not in the conversation), the tag shows @admin instead of translating to their name. This is different from what you see in the preview though, where it shows it accurately.

[Chris]

Two more. These two are fun edge cases.

1) The default micro-profile template does not take into account guests/superusers. (I didn't check guest; only superuser. Example) This is a post by Martyn's v4 superuser that was converted. The micro-profile just needs to check for $[user.username] existing outside of the parens to fix this.

2) Quotes of superusers from v4 do not convert properly. Also, superuser's are listed as guests, whether or not that should be correct. (They do have stars... they just are labeled as guests. Example

[Chris]

Sick of me yet? I found just a few more this time... only 25.

Also, please note that as I find bugs, I am updating the first post as well. I don't know when you guys are triaging them, but this lets you either do it all at once later or add these new ones in as you go.



WYSIWYG (Again)

1. It's possible to insert a URL around another URL.  This should either be an illegal state or allow you to edit the existing URL...
2. ... on that note, you can't edit the URL of an inserted link.  I'd expect double clicking or the above URL strategy to work.
3. If I'm highlighting text to insert a URL around it, it should default focus to the URL box instead of the text box
4. When I tag someone using the dropdown menu (via UBBC), it inserts "@admin" instead of the user's link until I update the preview.
5. I have a list of links.  I go to the start of the first link and hit enter to insert a new bullet point.  Instead, I get a long line break (inserting a div I think) and no new bullet.  Without the URL formatting on the link it does insert a new bullet.

General Admin Panel Stuff

1. Manage Plugins.  When I'm editing settings, if I hit "enter" in an input box, it should save as if I submitted the form.  (For better UX, it should be treated like a real form and actually reload the page.)
2. REQUEST: Template Settings - I love having the member count, but can I click it and see a list of members using the template?  This would allow me to solicit feedback on skins or warn a small subset of members of upcoming changes to the skin.  (I also can't find -any- way to tell what skin a member is using from an admin's perspective.)  This also helps me debug bugs reported to me by knowing which template they're using.
3. Headers/footers backups from v4 have the wrong deletion date: "They are for your reference and will not display on your forum. Auto Deletes: December 1st, 2013"
   

Admin Panel - Categories/Boards Management

1. After selecting a board/category, clicking it again or on something else should actually deselect it.  (I'm fine with just clicking it again to deselect.)
2. On the edit board/category popup, go to the Permissions tab.  Click any dropdown, use the arrow keys to start navigating, now hit "enter" to try and select an item.  It should only select the item.  Instead, it closes the popup and sometimes doesn't even save the updated value.  This is inconsistent with expected web UX and also with other parts of the PB system (i.e. Search page)
3. REQUEST: Please add a "Go to Board" link on the board row.  If the board is hidden, I shouldn't need to open the popup and navigate to another tab to get the link.  (Default it to opening in a new window too.)
4. REQUEST: When hovering over a board, can you please show the board's description?  It's helpful for double checking things quickly.
5. When trying to position a board at the end of a category after a board with sub-boards, it is very unintuitive to have to drop it next to the parent board instead of below the bottom-most sub-board.  I would use the horizontal position of the mouse to try to show where the board will be inserting (i.e. at what depth)
6. Normally when you hover over a board, you see the posts/threads.  If you edit a board's settings and then hover again, the stats are gone.
7. If you edit a setting, hit escape to close the popup, and then try to leave the page, it warns you that you have unsaved settings.  It is impossible to recover these settings anyways, so it shouldn't.  (Also, I think if you open another box and do it again, you actually get two confirmations.)

Members Page

1. "View Birthdays" doesn't describe accurate behavior.  It should be "View Today's Birthdays"
2. I get to this URL via the calendar page: forum.sz-ex.com/members?day=23&month=1&view=birthdays_other_day   I then switch to a different view ("view all").  I use the back button to go back, but it doesn't load this page.

Moving Threads

1. When moving multiple threads at once, there is no clear separation between the threads in the thread list.  Also, by default, there is no underline on the links, so it is very difficult to tell where one starts and one ends.  I would like them either as a list or with a comma between them.  The list poses issues with moving 5k threads in a board, so the comma strategy is probably best.
2. REQUEST: When moving threads, I did "Select All" and then tried to move them.  I didn't realize this selected the announcements too (I wouldn't have expected that when my goal was to move/clean a board.)  Please explicitly point out that announcements are selected.  (NOTE: Great job having it put the "moved thread" post in the right board! )
3. Clicking a link from the thread list when moving threads should either open in a new window or confirm that you'll lose your selection.
4. In an action menu, when you click on a parent of a sub-menu, it closes the menu.  This behavior is consistent with dropdown menus in both OSX and Windows.  (Put here because I did while clicking "Move")

General Bugs

1. "Mark Boards as Read" doesn't clear "new" marker for Participated Threads
   
2. If I view the only thread that was "new" in Participated Threads, Participated Threads still shows "new" even though if I open it there is nothing "new."  The mark as read function should probably clear this message and then recalculate "new"
3. If a post is edited by a staff member and a tag is added, it says the original creator tagged you instead of that staff member.
4. forum.sz-ex.com/search/results?what_at_least_one=studio&when_days=10&who_only_made_by=0&display_as=1  No matter what I do, at least one of the threads here is marked as "new" even though I've read it.  Multiple times.  (Benjamin found this one.)

[Chris]

Jan 3, 2014 8:38:15 GMT -8 Tim Camara said:

Your post reminds me of this scene.

I think I'm over the wall now.

[Chris]

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"

[Chris]

Jan 5, 2014 20:09:04 GMT -8 Chris said:

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more"

I'm over the wall, not done.  Challenge accepted.

[Tim Camara]

Okay, the vast majority of these are now in the bug list. Pat rejected a few of them as non-bugs, and the feature requests have been added as such.

[Chris]

Jan 6, 2014 11:18:55 GMT -8 Tim Camara said:

Okay, the vast majority of these are now in the bug list. Pat rejected a few of them as non-bugs, and the feature requests have been added as such.

Can you clarify which are non-bugs?  I'm just curious.

[VS Admin]

Things that didn't make the list, either because they are not bugs, or because we do not think that the new feature is worth the time investment versus other things on our list:

>Maybe for days from before v5 conversion, it should explain that the information for posts/members/threads wasn't available instead of showing 0. (Especially since it shows the page views from that time - Example of what it looks like currently)
This only affects forums that "held out" of conversion, having a message for everyone doesn't make sense. People can ask on support and it's a one-off explanation to them if they really want to know.

>REQUEST: Show me how far back you have data for
Doing so would not be easy.

>REQUEST: Whenever someone has a dangerous power (deletion or similar), please make the permission bar red.

>There is no way to explicitly save after clicking the header to re-order. I must then drag and drop something after clicking a header to save the new order. (This may apply to any autoform instead.)
The purpose of the column reordering in the first place was just so that people could find things easier. Looking back, with the reorder option on the right side we probably should not have implemented column reordering in the first place. To balance these two ends we're just leaving things as-is.

>On /admin/themes, the Theme Manager pictures is wrong. That is a picture of Theme Settings, yet I was explicitly trying to find "that page with the list of templates" which is actually Theme Manager. I'd either add a separate link or update the preview since it doesn't take you to Theme Settings.
It's still an area within that section, it's not hurting anything

>If you're typing in bold text, it'll show that as active above the editor. Inside a font size or a font family, it does not. This is inconsistent and forces me to switch to the BBCode tab to remember what size/family I was using.
We get these stats from the browser itself, showing other things like font size/type is a bit more complicated and don't think is a common issue. The WYSIWYG editor is one of the most complicated areas of v5 and even simple changes can take quite some time.

>If you paste something and then try to use cmd+z to undo that paste, it won't. It undoes your last edit.
This is because of our method to strip out formatting in the WYSIWYG editor, and there is no easy fix.

>If you hit "Clear Formatting" at the end of formatted text and start typing without clicking, it'll still use the formatting you just cleared. You have to manually undo it.
This feature is designed to clear formatting if you highlight text that has formatting. I don't believe there is an easy way to change the browser's current state in the content editable document to remove all formatting.

>(General UBBC) If you quote a post that has an extra UBBC end tag, it adds an extra quota endtag. (Entered UBBC, Result)
Invalid closing tags are not tolerated in v5. If you close a tag that doesn't match the last closed tag, it loops through all open tags and closes them off trying to find the correct open tag. Since it never finds it, all tags get closed. This is expected behavior due to bad user input.

>Copying and pasting from another PB WYSIWYG loses formatting.
This is intended and was done on purpose. Too many posts had formatting copied when copy/pasting from other websites or places. The end result was we decided everything would paste in plain text. If you want to copy styles between posts, switch to BBCode mode on each.

>Clicking "Spell Check" hits my popup blocker. I believe in this case window.open() either errors or returns false. (Either way, it's possible to detect.) I'd suggest showing a message to a user saying their popup blocker blocked it.
The browser should display a message saying that it blocked a popup, we believe that is enough. However if you post this in the Spellcheck Plugin thread we can look into updating it in the future, but for now it's not very critical and is expected behavior due to your browser plugin.

>After selecting a board/category, clicking it again or on something else should actually deselect it. (I'm fine with just clicking it again to deselect.)
We don't believe that this has any impact on the user experience either way. If they want to select a different board, all they need to do is click on it. This sounds more OCD than anything

>When trying to position a board at the end of a category after a board with sub-boards, it is very unintuitive to have to drop it next to the parent board instead of below the bottom-most sub-board. I would use the horizontal position of the mouse to try to show where the board will be inserting (i.e. at what depth)
This is just not possible without recoding an entire drag/drop library. We're using an existing one.

>Quotes of superusers from v4 do not convert properly. Also, superuser's are listed as guests, whether or not that should be correct. (They do have stars... they just are labeled as guests. Example)
Since most conversions are already done, this is a moot point, we're not going to re-convert the forums

>REQUEST: Template Settings - I love having the member count, but can I click it and see a list of members using the template?
That information is not easily queryable without potentially killing servers on large forums



15/70 it looks like did not make our list

[Chris]

Jan 6, 2014 13:38:28 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

>REQUEST: Template Settings - I love having the member count, but can I click it and see a list of members using the template?
That information is not easily queryable without potentially killing servers on large forums

Can we get an alternative implementation for a single user then?  I can't see it being expensive to expose the skin id/theme info on the full profile page (or just on summary.)

Again, my use case is debugging bugs that a member reports more easily.

(The rest of those make sense.)