Bug summaries look like links, but aren't, on "Is the bug you’re reporting one of these?" page

Bug #402147 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

[Based on komputes's comment in bug 380894.]

On the "Is the bug you’re reporting one of these?" page, the bug summary is a different color from the surrounding text, making it look like a link. It is also right next to the bug number. Everywhere else in Launchpad, when a bug summary is presented as a link together with the bug number, that link goes to the bug report. To have the link do something else on this page is unpleasantly surprising.

This bug will be fixed when either (a) the bug summaries are links to the bug reports, and most people seeing this page for the first time think they are, or (b) the bug summaries are not links to the bug reports, and most people seeing this page for the first time do not think they are.

This is a relatively difficult design problem, but there are three clues to how to fix it:
1. The current behavior was introduced to fix bug 380894, where expanding the section for a bug report in the list was too difficult. Fixing this bug should not regress that one; either the sections should not expand at all, or the clickable area to expand them should remain large.
2. Whenever a word or phrase is repeated several times in quick succession, it usually means the wrong kind of interface element is being used. Here, there are up to ten "view this bug" links in an ugly zigzag down the page. So the solution would probably get rid of those.
3. If you did not know that a bug was reported already, another bug report's number is not useful in determining whether that report describes the bug you're reporting.

So, one possible solution would be to move the bug number out of the expander label, and into the disclosed section. This would make the bug summary look less like a normal bug link, so it wouldn't be as surprising that it expands the section instead. And the bug number itself, together with the appropriate bug icon, would be a less repetitive link to the bug report than the phrase "view this bug" is.

▽ Custom information for each translation team (Fix Released since 2009-02-27)

    ♉_Bug 3_: It would be nice if we could easily add *MUST READ* type of links
    to the sidebar when one tries to translate something...

Fixing this bug probably would also fix bug 409027.

Tags: lp-bugs
Graham Binns (gmb)
Changed in malone:
importance: Undecided → High
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Graham Binns (gmb) wrote :

Sigh... I got click happy. Wrong bug.

Changed in malone:
status: Triaged → In Progress
assignee: nobody → Graham Binns (gmb)
assignee: Graham Binns (gmb) → nobody
status: In Progress → Triaged
description: updated
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