Useful bug reports are ones that get bugs fixed. A useful bug report normally has two qualities:

Reproducible. If an engineer can't see it or conclusively prove that it exists, the engineer will probably stamp it WORKSFORME or INVALID, and move on to the next bug. Every relevant detail you can provide helps.

Specific. The quicker the engineer can isolate the issue to a specific problem, the more likely it'll be expediently fixed. If you're crashing on a site, please take the time to isolate what on the page is triggering the crash, and include it as an HTML snippet in the bug report if possible. (Specific bugs have the added bonus of remaining relevant when an engineer actually gets to them; in a rapidly changing web, a bug report of "foo.com crashes my browser" becomes meaningless after the site experiences a half-dozen redesigns and hundreds of content changes.)

1. Go back to http://landfill.tequilarista.org/bugzilla-tip/ in your browser.

2. Select the Enter a new bug report link.

3. Select a product.

4. Now you should be at the "Enter Bug" form. The "reporter" should have been automatically filled out for you (or else Bugzilla prompted you to Log In again -- you did keep the email with your username and password, didn't you?).

5. Select a Component in the scrollbox.

6. Bugzilla should have made reasonable guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS" drop-down boxes. If those are wrong, change them -- if you're on an SGI box running IRIX, we want to know!

7. Fill in the "Assigned To" box with the email address you provided earlier. This way you don't end up sending copies of your bug to lots of other people, since it's just a test bug.

8. Leave the "CC" text box blank. Fill in the "URL" box with "http://www.mozilla.org".

9. Enter "The Bugzilla Guide" in the Summary text box, and place any comments you have on this tutorial, or the Guide in general, into the Description box.

Voila! Select "Commit" and send in your bug report! Next we'll look at resolving bugs.