Firefox Help: Reporting Bugs

[srividya]

Reporting Bugs
Bugs in Firefox are tracked using the Bugzilla database. With the increasing popularity of the Firefox browser, lots of bad bug reports are being filed and many of the good ones are duplicates of already filed bugs. The purpose of this page is to help you file better bug reports, which in the end will help the developers fixing the bug.

Before filing a bug report
There are four crucial steps that you should follow before filing your first bug report:

Use the latest nightly build of Firefox with a new profile Check if you can reproduce the bug in Mozilla (Application Suite) Check if the bug is already filed Finally, read the official Bug Writing Guidelines
1. Use the latest version of Firefox with a new profile
Make sure you are using the latest nightly build of Firefox. Always install it in an empty folder.

Create a new Firefox profile and then start Firefox using that profile. Now, try to reproduce the bug. Of course, if what you're about to file is not a bug, but an enhancement request (RFE), you can skip this step.

2. Check if you can reproduce the bug in Mozilla (Application Suite)
Since Firefox is based on the Mozilla codebase, many bugs in Firefox are actually bugs in Mozilla. The major difference between Firefox and Mozilla is the user interface (e.g. the toolbars, menus, status bar, etc., referred to as the "chrome" in Mozilla terms). This means that if you're experiencing a problem with the toolbar, it's probably a Firefox bug, but if you're having problems with web page rendering, connection failures or even printing, they're most likely Mozilla bugs.

Before even thinking of filing a bug report for Firefox, download the latest Mozilla nightly and try to reproduce the bug using a clean Mozilla profile. Get the latest nightly for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. If the bug exists in Mozilla, you should of course still file a bug report, but do not file it as a Firefox bug!

3. Check if the bug is already filed
The list of previously filed bugs is constantly growing, but if you look in the appropriate category, you'll notice that the list isn't that long. The components in Firefox are:

Bookmarks Build-config Disability Access Download Manager Extension/Theme Manager File Handling Find Toolbar/Fast Find Form Manager General Help Documentation Help Viewer History Installer JavaScript Console Keyboard Navigation Location Bar and Autocomplete Menus Migration OS Integration Page Info Password Manager Plugin Finder Service Preferences Product Site Search Software Update Startup and Profile System Tabbed Browser Toolbars View Source
The links above display a list of all bugs for that component (except the duplicates). If this is a new bug in the latest nightly build, you could always look in the list of bugs filed today. For the complete list of Firefox bugs, including duplicates, click here (will take a while to load).

4. Finally, read the official Bug Writing Guidelines
This last step only needs to be done once (hopefully), and is probably the most important one. You should never file a bug report before reading the official Bug Writing Guidelines, written by Gervase Markham. You will learn how to write a detailed and useful bug report, which will reduce the time it takes for a developer to fix the bug.