Hello,
I really do not want to be the “negative guy” here, so please take the notes below with the understanding that I’m writing this strictly with the intention to spark a discussion and to assist the Bricks’ team (and their users), this is not meant to be taken as venting/finger-pointing at all. I may also be wrong in the sense that I currently believe in seeing many more occurrences of these, it may be more of a coincidence but it just feels like I’m running into more and more defects very recently, and seeing more reports too in the forum for the 1.8.x series (including a high impact seen right away by users in 1.8.2 released today).
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I have noticed recently in the past few releases (mostly 1.8.x), that there have been an unusual uptick in what I’d call high-impact bugs/defects, or bugs which should have been an easy catch with automated testing (ideally).
I work for a software development company as my full-time job, so I definitely can appreciate that there will always be bugs / issues with every single release, it’s naive for anyone to think otherwise IMO. However the high-impact (and even the smaller but easy-to-find) bugs should ideally happen with less frequency if there is proper QA / testing in place. This makes me wonder if the test cases currently used need to perhaps be improved in a big way. It’s probably even more important as of recent too as Bricks continues to grow so quickly with a wider range of users and use-cases.
For reference, this is not a complete list at all but is a short-ish list of the defects I feel to be either quite high-impact / or otherwise was just very surprised to see uncaught before release, all filed in the 1.8.0 - 1.8.2 release cycle):
- SOLVED: Double css styles | Styles in footer | Bug in the last version
- (high-impact) SOLVED: Changes made on classes not reflecting in the builder
- SOLVED: Slider (Nestable) query loop broken in editor
- (high impact) WIP: Updated Bricks to 1.8.2 - global styles gone
- WIP: Theme Style > Typography in 1.8 beta shows wrong greyed-out default value, inheriting from mobile
- SOLVED: Nav (nestable): Active link styles not working for active Posts page
- SOLVED: Show / Hide Popup Interactions not working
- SOLVED: CSS input code disappears when renaming classes in 1.8
- SOLVED: Menu icon gap not respected in mobile menu
- SOLVED: Clear button not working in custom css section
My proposal is one that is probably already well known by the Brick’s team but wanted to at least write it out for everyone’s sake. The proposal: expand the automated test cases, and perhaps some of the manual ones too. Examples:
- Ensure tests are run with Inline styles set in the Bricks Settings, in addition to External Files of course.
- Ensure that there is testing to validate the greyed out (inherited) values shown in the builder to ensure they’re showing the expected value.
- Ensure tests include a comparison of what the builder shows versus what’s seen in the frontend.
- Ensure that when adding properties to an ID AND class, the changes are apparent in the builder.
- Ensure that upgrades are performed in a few different types of environments (different hosts, different WordPress and PHP versions, etc).
- Ensure expected behaviour when duplicating elements with custom CSS
- Ensure expected behaviour when any items are set in Global Theme Styles, ensure all settings work as expected (especially on top 10 most often used element global settings).
I am happy to help brainstorm further ideas too, or offer any insights I can provide on test setups (although I suspect you’re in the best position already to do that without me, haha). And I realize setting up these test cases are much more difficult than many realize, so I don’t expect this overnight at all, but maybe it can serve as a goal for perhaps test cases that may not have been considered yet.
I really don’t mean to be a pain in anyone’s side, I’m writing this out more to spark a discussion among the Bricks’ team, I don’t even really expect a response to this at all, it’s just something I wanted to share my thoughts on and hopefully the outcome is an improved testing / QA lab setup with expanded test cases to improve the quality of each release going forward.
Thank you for everything you do - it’s nothing short of amazing!! I’m so happy we have a great WordPress theme builder such as Bricks in the market. 
Thank you for your time and your commitment to your users.