Slipmat is still in (private) beta which means that we move fast and break things (to borrow a motto). We rely heavily on DJs and listeners to report any issues they might encounter. But the thing with issue reports is, a bad report helps no one, it in fact makes things worse. So here’s few tips on how to submit good bug reports;
1. Explain the basic premise clearly
You might have been dealing with the issue for an hour and it’s very clearly in your mind when you start writing the report. Please remember that someone else may have no idea what you’ve been doing or what you are talking about, so lay down the basic premise first clearly.
It’s usually a good idea to tell about your browser as well, including the fact that were you on mobile (which is not the default) or desktop (that is the default). The officially supported browsers for DJs are the latest stable Firefox and Chrome (desktop), for listeners the site should work on any recently new desktop browser.
Bad: Event creation doesn’t work.
Good: I’m trying to create a scheduled event but the submit button is disabled even thought I’ve filled out all the fields. I was using Firefox.
2. Remember to include date, time and other relevant details
Fixing bugs often involves searching the incident from error logs. This cannot be done if you don’t include any time or other details in your report. If your report involves an event, please tell at least it’s name. Also never leave out a rough estimate of date and time.
Bad: My event had errors.
Good: I encountered [description of an error] at my event called “Trance is ear nectar from Gods #87” last night around 5pm GMT
3. Include a screenshot with any UI-related issues
A picture can tell more than thousand words. But a bad or missing/broken picture isn’t worth shit.
Instead of using your camera to take a picture of your computer screen, use the built-in screenshot functionality and take a screenshot of the whole screen. If you want to censor something from the photo, you can draw on it, but don’t just crop a small part of the screen, you usually also crop out important details which could help in debugging the issue.
Lastly, don’t upload the screenshot to a third-party service, upload it straight here on Backstage so it’s in the same place with your original report.