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How to submit seamonkey imaging bugs

written by Eli Goldberg)

Why You Should Read This

As one of the most commonly exercised functions within the Mozilla browser, the ImageLib component receives an overwhelming number of bug report submissions.

Many of these, unfortunately, have lacked the information necessary to facilitate a timely and efficient bug investigation, and unfortunately have been diverting engineering time away from fixing Mozilla bugs, rather than expediting the process.

To help you write bug submissions that get bugs fixed and move the Mozilla project forward, we are providing this list of information that's normally required to investigate an ImageLib bug report, and ask that you include it in bug reports assigned to the ImageLib component.

What is an ImageLib bug?

ImageLib decodes GIF, JPEG and PNG images, and provides the decoded data to the compositor for display.

If the browser can display an image when loaded separately from the page, ImageLib is working, and the actual imaging bug exists elsewhere in the product.

(If you need help in assigning a particular imaging bug, we'll accept it in ImageLib and reassign it for you.)

Required Information for Imaging Bug Reports

Please provide as many of the following pieces of information as are relevant to your bug report. (If you're not sure, please err on the side of providing more information.)

  1. Have you double-checked the Mozilla Most Frequently Reported Bugs page?
    Most imaging bugs being submitted are duplicates of known bugs. You can save time and effort by confirming that your bug probably isn't a well-known duplicate before submitting it.
  2. Have you followed the Mozilla QA Bug Writing Guidelines?
    In particular, please isolate the following, as expounded upon in the Bug Writing Guidelines:
    • Steps to reproduce.
      (If reproducible and applicable.)
    • Actual results.
      Should you experience visual oddities difficult to clearly describe in words, please enclose a screen shot.
    • Expected results.
    • Build dates & platforms checked.
      Be sure to check on a build released within the past three days; your bug may already have been fixed. (Nightly builds can be downloaded from the mozilla.org nightly builds page.)
  3. Have you isolated the problem source?
    • Is the problem triggered by the image file, or by the HTML instructions on the web page?
      To find out, type the image's direct URL path into your browser's URL bar. If the image doesn't display properly when viewed separately from the web page it was on, it's probably an ImageLib bug, triggered by the image file. If the image does display properly, your bug is probably triggered by the web page.
    • If triggered by the web page, can you isolate the specific HTML instructions that trigger the bug?
      Five lines of HTML can be dissected much faster than 5 pages!
    • Have you tried loading the images from your local hard drive?
      Many bug reports describing images not loading have actually been networking issues. Try copying the images from the web site onto your local hard disk. If the images load properly from your local hard disk, the bug probably belongs to the Networking Library, rather than to ImageLib.
    • Have you tried disabling Java and JavaScript?
(Guidelines originally written by Eli Goldberg)

Additional suggestions welcome.