Another common-sense, obvious business procedure that apparently isn't so obvious:
Please don't send screenshots to me unsolicited.
How about an MP3 of me describing the problem?
merlyn on 2006-03-02T01:48:09
Or an MP4 of a video capture of me handwaving while describing the problem?
Yes, not so obvious...
Alias on 2006-03-02T04:12:13
Why would people be sending you screenshots exactly?
Re:Yes, not so obvious...
jdavidb on 2006-03-02T19:18:40
Allegedly to illustrate the problem.
A picture is worth a, er
rafael on 2006-03-02T09:17:15
Reminds me the day we got at perl5-porters a bug report containing a jpeg file, copy of a DOS console displaying a rather trivial perl error (such as "Global symbol requires explicit package name" or so). (Can't find it now.) Nicholas commented privately that this way of reporting bug was crap: the reported could have used, at least, a lossless image compression format!
Unfortunately, this is SOP where I work
runrig on 2006-03-02T19:52:00
If users have a problem with our GUI app, they'll copy the entire screen and send it rather than just describe what the problem is. When there's a SQL error, a box pops up with the current SQL statement. Unfortunately, it's a scrolled box and the statement is usually truncated in the screenshot. I often have to tell them to copy and paste all of the text in that box
:-)
Re:Unfortunately, this is SOP where I work
Alias on 2006-03-03T00:32:46
Sounds like you need a "Report This Problem" button on the SQL dump thing.
so what's the problem...?
jhi on 2006-03-03T06:35:31
I used to routinely debug intranet apps (web frontend, db backend) using Windows
.BMP snapshots, each sized several dozen megabytes... it made one debug fast unless I wanted my email quota to run out pretty quickly.
Re:so what's the problem...?
jdavidb on 2006-03-03T17:46:26
File size is often a problem, but the big problem is the often irrelevancy or redundancy of the screenshots.
Re:so what's the problem...?
jdavidb on 2006-03-03T17:47:34
Oh, and sending it to me when I'm not the one responsible for the problem (because you CC'ed it to everybody and their dog) is also a problem, particularly if it's a really big file.
I have very few apps for which a screenshot would help in debugging.
