Bite sized bugs. Like delicious doughnut holes of fixes for you to devour.

[deborah]

denise asked me to put together a list of bite sized bugs: bugs that, assuming you already have a basic environment set up, will be quick and easy fixes. A couple of quick disclaimers:

Obviously one person's two-minute bug is another person's introductory programming project. There is a lot of guesswork in making this list. I am targeting for bugs that will take a minute or two for people who know the relevant part of the code fairly well, but won't be out of the reach of anyone who wants to do something introductory. In other words, I'm trying to avoid some of the more obscure parts of the code base.

Some of these bugs I am completely guessing on the difficulty. For example, I don't know, say, the poll code myself, but it looks like a pretty straightforward bug. If you take on one of these bugs and you find an unholy tangle of spaghetti code from R'lyeh's malignant depths, the failure is all mine. (Well, all mine, and whoever created the unholy tangle of spaghetti in the first place. Entirely possibly that person was also me. /o\) Seriously, I took something that looked tiny to me off this list after allen laughed a hollow, bitter laugh at its inclusion. Well, he was on IRC and he just said "no, it's not small," but the sentiment was clear.

Styles:

ETA: if you look in the comments, we have two volunteers to hand hold people through creating new themes. ♥

• Librarian's Dream: new themes : straigthforward themes with no extra CSS or whatever.Very quick to do especially if you don't do the previews and the ones with images and only do small batches. Anything would help and we can add previews later since there won't be another code push for a while.
• s2id/style parameters not carried across some links. ETA: While this is a styles bug, fixing it will be a Perl project.
• Advanced Customization: option to duplicate layers and styles
• Ability to style crosspost links
• Include layout and/or theme name in Layout Credit module Needs some Perl love but there's a lot of detail specced out in the bug comments.
• Method to delete multiple user-layers at once. A nice intermediate project.

Non-styles, HTML and CSS heavy:

Almost nothing we have is entirely Perl-free, because you have to understand enough of the Perl to edit the HTML in the BML files (unless you are lucky and the bug is in the Template Toolkit). These are the bug tickets I think are most likely to require primarily knowledge of how to manipulate HTML and CSS, though, with minimal Perl.

• Bug 4509: make the cut tag expanders larger and scalable. The explanation for how to do this is mostly enclosed in the bug ticket.
• Bug 4739: layout tables are an accessibility/usability problem on the modify interest page. If you know CSS, this might be a very nice one for you.
• Bug 3361: Improve colors of the highlight/warning/error boxes
• Bug 2847: Rearrange the navigation strip
• Bug 2632: Some styles not displaying properly in iPad Safari/iPhone. Might be fixed; needs confirmation.
• Bug 2590: There should be a link to the mobile site from the main one

Non-styles, mostly Perl:

• Bug 4651: location of config files hardcoded in some places. Hint for people getting started: this bug has been partially fixed, so you can look at the partial-fix commit to get an idea of what needs to happen elsewhere.
• Bug 4772: statistics page uses old-style URLs.
• Bug 4744: provide actual username + PIN for email posting instructions. This seems like a nice usability win, probably more bite-size for someone who already has some familiarity with the code and the way we access usernames, and a nice introduction (if less bite sized) for someone new to the code.
• Bug 4488: fix the proportional display of poll results.
• Bug 3879: Include information about icons in text-notifications for comments
• Bug 4786: our HTML cleaner should gobble up multiple blank lines at the end of an entry.
• Bug 4516: in flat view, the edit icon button always appears, even when the comment is non-editable.
• Bug 4605: some metadata are missing from moderation emails.
• Bug 2887: Add entry title to "view this entry" email link

Comments

[exor674]

I really think http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4685 belongs in mostly Perl, as that's backend styles.

[momijizukamori]

For any new themes - and I think we've got three or four more for other styles - I am totally willing to help walk people through doing them. Because even that is less tedious than doing all of them myself.

[ninetydegrees]

Seconded.
We have others which are a little less straightforward but are still very easy to do with some handholding, even if you've never done that before.

[alierak]

I love small bugs, they are also good for learning git if you happen to be an experienced dev who's feeling a bit behind the curve (I have NO IDEA who that would describe).

[denise]

i love them because there's something totally satisfying in giving yourself two hours to work on code and knocking out like five bugs in that time period. total sense of accomplishment!

[ninetydegrees]

Another one for styles I think: Bug 4571

[baggyeyes]

I'd like to take a crack at Bug 4758, the Librarian's Dream themes. I will need handholding! I will!

[denise]

momijizukamori is all about the handholding for styles stuff! you should come hang out in irc. (unless you already are under a different name and i didn't make the connection!)

[baggyeyes]

Excellent! I'll step in there. I'm okwari in irc.

[ninetydegrees]

A certain number of bite-sized bugs have been added to Zilla lately. I've snatched some of them because I love small fixes but if a newbie wants to get started w/ one of these I'll happily give them up. Here's the ones I have:

-- add "extra large" setting for image placeholders
-- Contextual popups: CSS for 'a' from style/theme applies causing issues
-- Note on /admin/capedit that if you're changing payment status, you should try /admin/pay
-- plain text notification of birthday should include link to journal, link to send PM
-- Add "view my entries in this community" to post-entry-creation page for communities
-- On the system default footer for crossposts, make the word OpenID a link to information about OpenID
-- dmca policy should be explicitly cc-by-sa (most perfect bug ever for a newbie because the hardest part is finding where this is and not fixing the bug itself and for small bugs this is generally 90% of the work ;)