Compatibility/Guide

This guide is an early draft started on July 2013. The goal is to give the tools and guidance for helping the Web community to:

• Help report the issues in a useful way
• Analyze the Web sites so that the bugs contain useful information
• Give guidance on how to contact Web sites owners, developers for fixing Web compatibility issues.

We can't solve everything ourselves. The work and the effort of the community is key to the success of the open Web. These efforts have to be considered in the constraints of the business requirements of each contacted Web sites. We are not here to blame, we are to make the Web more open to anyone.

You can help the open Web by:

• reporting an issue
• analyzing the issue
• helping us find the right person to contact
• negotiating with the Web site to get it fixed

Reporting a Web compatibility issue

If you experience a Web compatibility issue with your Web browsers with regards to a Web site. It's useful for us to know which steps you have followed to reach the issue. If, for example, one must log in to see the issue, it is important to say so.

1. Create a new bug in Bugzilla
2. Describe the steps you have been doing for reaching the point where you have an issue. (Link to an example)
3. Describe what is happening
4. Describe what you were expecting
5. Give information about your device and your browser
6. (Bonus) Test in one or more browsers to understand the differences

We might ask further questions in the bug report, so we can better understand the issue.

If you have an issue with Opera (Bug Wizard), Chrome (Bug), Safari (Bug) or Internet Explorer (Bug)

Finding The Right Contact on a Web site

For solving the issues, we often need to find the right person on the Web site. It is the hardest part of the work, but it's where you can really make a difference. Some Web sites are written in a language that you are mastering. Some Web sites are in country where we do not have much context on how to contact the right person. You can help. The open Web is the work of everyone.

There is more than one strategy for finding a person related to a Web compatibility issue. Here are a few:

• Does the company has a developer relations department?
• Is there a support email address or Web form on the Web site?
• Is there an email address for Communications department?
• Is there an email address for Technical department?
• If the company has an organigram of their management, search for people who are CTO, Marketing, Communications related, then check online if you can find either on twitter or linkedin. Be careful. If the person is obviously using the account for only personal stuff, do not bother them.
• Does the company have a twitter account?
• Does the company have a Github, Bitbucket or Google code account?
• As a last resort, you may try through the Press relations address which is usually open.
• Call a phone number of the company, you might be bounced around.

Before contacting, read the next section.

Negotiating with the Web site for fixing a Web compatibility issue

First of all, this is a negotiation process. People you will try to contact have their own set of constraints and that might be difficult for them to understand, fix the issue. So be nice.

• Never ever be aggressive with the persons you are trying to reach out. We want a better Web, not an angry Web ;).
• Never assume you are contacting the right person, except if you really know you do.
• Do not harass people with a lot of emails (even if they are nice with you). A good rule of thumb is to wait one week in between two contacts. Then a month for the third contact. If nothing has happened during the 5 weeks, give up.
• Never share publicly the emails, names of people in the bug report if they have not decided to reveal themselves. Sometimes people will be willing to help fixing a Web site without necessary telling their management. Exposing them would make their work more difficult.
• Invite people to participate to the bugzilla themselves.
• If someone doesn't want to open a bugzilla account but is willing to share his/her comments in the bug report, help them to publish it (but only if they agreed)

There is no perfect email for contacting Web site, but if you think that you are not necessary contacting the right person it helps a lot writing a shorter email.

   Hi,
   
   I'm reporting an issue about your Web site
   http://www.example.org/
   not working properly with Firefox (Mozilla). Could you
   put me in contact with the right person in the
   Communications/Marketing team and/or Technical team in
   charge of your Web site.
   
   The issue is described in details on the Mozilla bug tracker.
   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=<issue_number>
   
   Thanks a lot for any help.
   Best regards

You see very simple, straight to the point and asking for a better contact. It is just an example. Some languages require more formalism, etc. Adjust depending on the local culture in your own language.

On twitter, it could be straightforward such as

   @example Hi, would you know who I should contact 
   for Web site issues? 
   See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=<issue_number>

Analyzing for Web Compatibility Issues

TODO.

Testing

Clearing cookies, private data, after removing UA override.

Bugzilla Conventions for Web Compatibility Issues

whiteboard keywords for categorizing the issues

We are using a set of keywords in the whiteboard field to help us figuring out priorities, languages, etc.

• [uaoverride]: When the current bug is about the UA override list added on to Firefox for Android or Firefox OS
• [country-ISOCODE]: Some websites are dedicated to a specific country. For example, a Frenc Web site can be classified as [country-fr], a japanese Web site as [country-jp], for international Web sites you can use [country-int]
• [sitewait]: Once the Web site has been contacted for Web compatibility issues. This helps to not have two separate persons contacting the same Web site. Leave also a comment with the date when you contacted the site. list of contacted Web sites