Dear users of Pontoon, the time has finally come to show you our work on Translate.Next. After about 9 months of full time work from me, and a big help from Matjaz since the beginning of this year, we have at last reached a point where we think the new Translate interface is usable. We would thus like to start testing it with you. This topic explains how that process is going to work, and gives all information needed to do efficient testing.
Please head over here if you want to know what Translate.Next is about.
What help do we need
Translate.Next is a functional rewrite, meaning that all features should be more or less the same as in the current page. Only the underlying code is changing, not the way the page works. The first thing we would like to find out is if we introduced any regressions compared to the current Translate page.
As it is an ongoing process, there are still a bunch of features that have not been implemented yet. We track a list of those features, but we might have missed some. Hence the second thing we’d like to have help on: make sure we did not miss anything in our bug list.
Finally, Pontoon’s Translate page has a lot of features, and everyone uses them differently. In order to make Translate.Next usable by as many users as possible, as soon as possible, we would appreciate getting help prioritizing the next features to implement.
To summarize, we would like to have your help:
- identifying potential regressions;
- making sure all bugs are tracked;
- prioritizing missing features.
How to use Translate.Next
To turn Translate.Next on, head to our staging Pontoon instance, then log in. Once you are authenticated, go to the Translate page for your favorite locale and project. There you will see, in the top right corner of the page, a link that offers you to “Try Translate.Next”.
Where to find the switch link
When you click that link, it will turn Translate.Next on for your account. That means that you will get redirected to Translate.Next (notice the small differences with the old page? ) every time you hit the Translate page – whether it is from internal links in Pontoon, or external links, or bookmarks… You are now ready to test Translate.Next (see our testing plan below).
If you need to go back to using the old Translate page, simply click the “Leave Translate.Next” link in the top right corner. You can very easily switch back and forth using that link. Note however that it is only available from the Translate pages.
Important: We currently ask you to test on our staging site. That means any changes you will make will not make it to the product, nor will it be seen by other people in your team. We do this to avoid bugs that might cause harm to your team’s workflow. Once we have confidence in Translate.Next – based on your feedback – we will start testing it in production.
What is currently not working
As I mentioned, this is an ongoing process, so some key features are not yet implemented. We have a list of bugs that we track for missing features or problems in existing features, that I will get to in a moment, but first let me give you an overview of the main things that you might miss.
- Fluent integration is very basic: there’s a code editor, with syntax highlighting and error checking, which is great, but strings are displayed as source everywhere and things like machinery will be buggy.
- Batch actions are missing.
- Only the basic search filters are available, and they cannot be combined yet.
- The navigation has been greatly simplified, and we intend to spend some time making it better (meaning, not like in the current Translate page) in the near future.
- There is no feedback when a translation is submitted (if your string has errors or warnings, or if it is the same as an existing translation for example).
Hopefully, those will not be blockers to your work. If they are, please let us know as that will help us prioritize our next steps better. Remember that you can always switch back to the old Translate page to perform actions that are not available on Translate.Next.
We keep track of the list of known issues about Translate.Next in our Pontoon wiki page. Please give it a quick look to see if an issue you encountered is already tracked or not, before reporting it. If you can’t find it, or you’re unsure, let us know here and we’ll make sure that it is tracked.
Known issues about Translate.Next
How to give feedback
We will open a Discourse topic for each Testing Phase (see below), and those topics should be used for all feedback and discussions about the testing of Translate.Next. This original post will be updated as the testing process evolves (we’ll notify you of any relevant changes with a comment), but comment here only for questions about the process, not to report issues.
We do not require of you that you file bugs. We will take care of turning your feedback and issue reports in Discourse into bugs in bugzilla. The previously linked list of tracked issues will thus regularly be updated with your input (and it will shrink with our work, of course 
).
When reporting an issue, the following information is important to us:
- a URL
- a description of the issue
- steps to reproduce the issue
- the outcome you expected
Want to help?
If you want to be part of this testing process, well, you can. We have called specific people out because they have helped us in the past and because we want to ensure we have enough people testing. However this process is open to anyone willing to help – hence our doing this in public. Just make sure that you follow the instructions in this post and in the post detailing the phase in progress.
Timeline of our testing plans
We are currently in Phase 1.
Phase 1 [current]
Test with a limited number of curated users, on stage. Testing instructions are in the Testing Translate.Next – Phase 1 topic.
Users: (curated)
- Lizie (fr)
- Michal (cs)
- Peter (zh-TW)
- Yaron (he)
Testing platform: stage
Estimated time frame: ~1 month, starting now
Requirements:
- All P1 bugs are fixed [done]
Phase 2
Test with a limited number of curated users, on production.
Users: (curated)
- To be determined
Testing platform: production
Estimated time frame: ~2 months, starting in May
Requirements:
- All P1 bugs are fixed [done]
- No critical bugs have been identified during the previous round of testing
Phase 3
Test with an increasing number of randomly chosen users, on production.
Users: Randomly selected using django-waffle’s Samples feature (or something similar).
Testing platform: production
Estimated time frame: ~1 month, starting in July
Requirements:
- All P2 and P3 bugs are fixed