Bug 3426

Created attachment 2921 [details] [review]
Proposed patch

Was learning about forms this evening, so I used this as an example to work on.
Hopefully this helps even a little.

Very cool man! We have to figure out how to attach this to the site and then
track  clipart. I wonder if making this as an interface to bugzilla wouldn't be
such a bad idea? We need to figure out how to do user management, so I wonder if
tieing into Bugzilla's db wouldn't be such a bad idea.

So if we went this route, then clipart requests would be filed as bugs into this
bugtracker. I could setup another product for clipart requests.

Maybe though this needs to be more integrated with the website.

Thoughts on this?

I think that integration on the site is probably better.

Anyhow, the form looks great.

Yes I think integration to the web site is way batter.

Most clipart users are not going to be willing to create a bugzilla account and 
jump through hoops to make a request.

It needs to be as simple to use as possible.

However I read in someones e-mail that it would be good to be able track if 
someone is working on a request, and if it is complete or what. This would be 
good as a bug, but I still think it would be too complicated for general 
clipart users.

Also of note I just remembered somone suggesting the requestor be able to place 
a "need by" date into the request. So should be added to the form if this 
becomes a go.

Cool, you should have a go at adding it to the website to a test page. Then, we
can work together on implementing this functionality. I need to spearhead the
user management system.

Just to give a few pointers:

1) The usability of the form could be *greatly* improved if the label element
was used. Two good links:

   * http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/forms/
   * http://htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/forms/

You can also wrap a label around an element and thus don't need to use the for
attribute. Like so:

<label>Your name: <input type="text [...] ></label>

This is especially important on radio buttons and check boxes as they are very
very small and hard to click otherwise.

2) You could also use legends and fieldsets -- see the above links.

3) Please convert it to XHTML -- we should use the same DOCTYPE throughout the
site otherwise things would just get silly.

As much as I like Bugzilla, I agree that we probably don't want to require end
users to create a bugzilla account in order to submit clipart requests.

> Also of note I just remembered somone suggesting the requestor be able 
> to place a "need by" date into the request. 

I would worry that a "need by" date, labelled that way, could create an
expectation that the request would (or should, or needs to) be filled by that
date, which is an expectation we probably don't want to create.  Perhaps it
should be labelled "Request expires" (or something along those lines) instead,
to convey the subtly-different idea that the requester only wants the item if it
can be done by that date.  I realise that I'm picking semantic nits here, but I
think the difference in expectations could potentially be significant.

Created attachment 3071 [details]
Example difference image

Made some revisions to the form as suggested.

I see that this is already addressed somewhat in the layout of the form but I
think the description part should have a little text about how a request is more
likly to be filled if it is very descriptive and not something like "church
clipart" That is too broad a catagory for most artists to tackle. The more files
requested in a single submition, the less likly to be filled. From filling
requests and watching requests be filled, the ones that are usually done are the
ones that are simple requests or are very detailed in what they are looking for.

Sorry, I ramble....

(In reply to comment #2)

I think using Bugzilla is a good idea, we just need to create a front end on the
openclipart site that allows for easy submission and review of the request.

As far as needing bugzilla accounts, we could have a generic "clipartrequest"
bugzilla user. When a new submission occurs, to keep track of the requestors
name and email you could have the description start with something like:

  RequestedBy : <Name>
  RequestedByEmail: <E-mail Address>

  comments from the submission form

A similar account could be used for the clip artist responding to the request.

A quick perusal of the bugzilla docs, shows that the response to your bugzilla
query can come back in different formats, html, rdf, etc.  So hopefully
something like the rdf format would be relatively easy to parse and then display
in a preferred format on the openclipart site.

This approach may be as complicated, or even more so, than just coming up with
our own from scatch, but I think it is worth exploring.

This is easy to do now, but we have changed the way we do things. This is out of date :)