So you’re scooting along with Helium and all of a sudden something happens and your experience comes to a crashing halt – what do you do?
Bugs are an unfortunate part of any computer program – whether desktop based like Windows or web based like Helium. As programs grow they become more and more complex and it’s simply a fact of life that programmers are human, they make mistakes (even the best ones), and things go wrong.
We run all our new code through a process – called Quality Assurance (QA for short) – which finds many bugs, errors and issues that we fix before we ever release it to you, the Helium community. This is after normal testing by the developer of their own code to make sure it performs as they expect. However, it’s inevitable something gets through. Sometimes you might not even notice it or it’s trivial – some font is 12 px in IE but 11px in Firefox, etc – but sometimes it’s to the point where Helium – or a part of it – becomes unusable to you.
So what do you do?
Simple. You want to file what is called a bug report. Ideally, you do this at help [at] helium dot com. However, don’t just tell us “X is broken” – we need a little more help than that. It’s not that we’re trying to be difficult or saying there is not a problem – it’s simply that we need enough information so that we can recreate problem – which is the first step in narrowing down what the issue is so that we know how to fix it.
So, in the e-mail, please include answers to the following questions:
- What operating system are you using?
- XP or Vista is very useful, but even Mac or Windows (or Linux?) helps.
- What browser are you using?
- This one is very important. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera? Which version? For example, IE6 behaves vastly different than IE7. Same with FF2 and FF3. Typically you can find this information by selecting either “File” or “Help” in the top of the browser and clicking “About [browser name]“
- Do you have any extensions active?
- This is mostly dealing with Firefox – although others like IE7 allow this as well. Are you using Ad Blocker? Firebug? Do you have no idea what this means? (meaning likely you’re using the browser default) We have found some extensions that don’t play nice with our features.
- What were the steps you took to get to where you found the error?
- “I was trying to write an article…” – ok. From a “write now” link or via leapfrog? Did you copy and paste from another program? Did you eat your Wheaties this morning? (kidding)
- What exactly is the issue? (be detailed)
- i.e. “It won’t submit, it just shows the whirring icon”, “It refreshes the page and I lose my work”, or “My computer exploded and my dog soiled himself.” (kidding again on the last one)
Most importantly, again, bear with us. We’re trying to help and I know that when you get an issue the last thing you want to do is answer 20 questions – you want it fixed and you want it fixed now. We do too. The simple fact of computer programs is that there are so many different factors – different hardware, operating systems, internet connections, etc – that a million things can go wrong. (much of the reason why console gaming has basically replaced computer gaming – one hardware and software configuration)
I hope this helps.
