I think I found the absolute BEST way to report bugs and it's free too.

I have done quite a bit of testing of websites in my day, and reporting bugs is never a joy. But I think I have found what may be the absolute fastest way to report bugs. The approach consists of a few different parts:

Get a Flickr account and download Grabbr. Grabbr is great for taking screenshots and sending them to Flickr: you click shift F-12, and the app opens with a screenshot in it. Then you click the upload button. Then you open your Flickr window in the browser, click "my fotos" and the screenshot shows up.
Now you are looking at a screenshot of the bug. Click "add note", and add a few notes on areas of the screen describing the bug. I find this works really naturally, adding the notes forces you to describe what happens, and about half website bugs can be easily described in a screenshot.
Next, I add a bugreport to my bugtracking system. Often, it is just a title and a "see http://...." (the flickr link). That's all that's needed for the developers to reproduce and fix the bug.

Here's an example bugreport at Flickr. Hover over the photo to see the note. This is really the fastest bug reporting system I've ever used. It takes between 30 and 60 seconds to report most bugs. For real. And you need a lot less text to describe a problem with a screenshot and the notes feature. Of course it doesn't work for all bugs. Some bugs take more time. What do you think? Useful? I'm loving it!

# Dec 1, 2005

← All posts