( With apologies to 'Evil Tester' )
What follows is a bug. Or not. See which side of me you agree with.
[Scene]
Creating an email for a blog I read a lot. After clicking send, the page refreshes. This is what I observe:
Evil Zach:
Look at that red text!!!! It looks an awful lot like an error indicator in an ASP page. Are you sure it was sent successfully?
Good Zach:
I don't perceive the content to be an error message, so I'll assume that some kind of non-errant process just occurred in web-land. Besides, I'm not convinced that we've seen an error occur on this page before. How would we know if one did? Can we assume that the UI metaphor employed would map to something we've experienced before?
Evil Zach:
You think too much. Devs don't like re-inventing the wheel. If the choice is between an error widget they can drop on the page, or rolling their own error indicator - which do YOU think they would use?
Good Zach:
Good point. But we've sent messages from this page before.
Evil Zach:
Did they ever respond?
Good Zach:
Um...No, but they are exceptionally busy folk. It would be naive to expect replies all the time.
Evil Zach:
Maybe they hate your FACE! Look, the contents of our message are still there - Name, Email, Subject, Message. Did you notice that the SEND button is still there, too? Why? Our previous experience with e-mail clients is that when a message is sent, we are taken to a page ( or area ) that alerts us to the result of the attempt and AWAY from content. The page reflects the state of the system. This says to me, "Not much has changed, Bucko".
Good Zach:
Well, it may be that the developers chose this work flow in case an error DID occur. That way, the user would not lose their carefully crafted email.
Evil Zach:
Now we're back to the, "How do you know there's a problem here?" Trust your feelings, Luke. By the way, you are making a lot of concessions for the developers.
Good Zach:
True, but I'm unsure if this really is an issue and what severity it may be. My feelings are conflicted. I'll ask the testing community if they would raise this up as an issue if they were...um...us.
Evil Zach:
More Xanax, please.
20090309
Problem ID: 8462583284582707666
Entered by: Zachary Fisher
Entered by: Zachary Fisher
4 Comments:
March 9, 2009 at 7:47 PM-
Comment ID:
3626640947140888789
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March 9, 2009 at 9:14 PM
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Comment ID:
5664889302086255799
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March 10, 2009 at 5:08 PM
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Comment ID:
1141847838055956724
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March 10, 2009 at 5:33 PM
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Comment ID:
5150679628485207524
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Written by: Ben Simo
Is this red text consistant with the use of red text elsewhere on the site? Is red text used only for errors? Or is red text also used for notices that are not errors. Are there other places red text is used for notices for which you can verify that the text matches the actual result?
Can you identify the platform on which the site is built? Can you find other sites built on this platform? What do they do when you submit a message? Do you get a response from other sites on the same platform?
Written by: Anonymous
Well...since I recognize that page, I can let you know that the blog system is built on top of Community Server (Telligent).
It's a bug to me - that's a ridiculous way to tell a user that mail has been sent.
Written by: Zachary Fisher
Alan - Ha! Totally busted me! If it is any consolation, I didn't think it was your problem.
Written by: Zachary Fisher
@Ben - I just submitted a comment to this site. I received no red text or confirmation. Instead, I was summarily ushered to the main page. So, there is a little incongruity with respect to how web correspondence is handled, i.e. e-mail versus comments.
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