What Weekend Testing Learnt Me

I am back with the post regarding weekend testing sessions(www.weekendtesting.com). Every session is new learning experience. How much I write about weekend testing will be less. The mission will be provided to the testers and there will be pairing or solo testing for 1 hour. Generate reports and participate in the discussion about the mission after testing the application. Coming back to my learning experience, it was great experience to do testing in 1 hour about the application rather I could say it will be a challenge thrown to test in 1 hour.
1.Some sessions made me excited of involvement and some disappointed because I side-tracked the mission, loosing concentration in the middle.
2.This made me to test some open source applications to improve myself. Suggestions like go through the heuristics, blogs helped me.
3.Whenever I am in WT Sessions, I want to take initiative and practice questioning.
4. Found where I am doing mistakes and got the chance to rectify them and move forward.

The Importance of Questioning worked

I was been into my uncle's home yesterday. He was been into share markets and going through the shares websites. He was provided with a website to check his status that day. He is a frequent user of firefox. He realized that the website 

1. Is unable to display the content on the right side when the link is clicked.

2. unable to show hand icon when hovered on the text.

He called me and told me to rectify the problem he got.

I went through the website and questioned him the following questions:

Q: Asked by me A : answered by Uncle.

Q : Since when you have got this problem?

A : I just opened the website today and unable to open the links.

Q : Have you called the website provider ans asked about this problem?

A : Yes. He told me everything is fine and all are using but no one reported the problem

Q : Have you installed a new version of Firefox or any other software?

A : No.

Q: Have you tried it on internet Explorer?

A :No

I have done this following steps:

1. I  updated Firefox to the latest version.

2. Checked for the antivirus update and run the scan.

3. Entered the same website to check whether the problem exists. And It exists.

Then I thought it would may  be compatibility problem and entered the same website in the internet explorer 6 uncle is using.

And yes. The website is compatible with Internet Explorer and not with Firefox.

I told him the website is not compatible with Firefox and use the website in Internet Explorer and I updated the IE to IE 8.

The questioning has worked for me and it worked for many testers

My own Testing Session.

I thought to have my own testing session after ajay demonstrated virtual keyboard application which happened to be in weekend testing for further testing. As I also participated in that WT, and while installing for testing I struck with the anti-virus which didn't proceed further as the anti-virus software I am using called it a Trojan.
Coming to my own Testing Session, I took VLC media player portable as an appication to test. My mission is to know the menus and icons present in the player. I kept time limit of 1 hour to test the application.The following observations I have made while testing :

Mission : To explore Menu itmes in VLC media player portable application downloaded from portableapps.com

Date and time : 4th February 5 : 45 Pm

End time : 6 : 45 pm

Tester : Vamshi

Test Environment : windows xp sp 2 , VLC portable version 1.1.2 The Luggage as displayed in Help > About VLC

Notes :

a . Media  : 

 1) Clicking on media and clicking on open file with the shortcut provided ctrl + O.  opens to select a file from the hard disk.

 2) opening advanced open file with the short cut ctrl + shift + o .opens media in file, disc,network and capture device.

 3) opening file in advanced mode by clicking on add button and selected a .doc  file throws an error:
No suitable decoder module:

VLC does not support the audio or video format "undf". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.

issue: Selected .doc extension and the error message showing format "undf"

4) issue : we can edit the file name in the advanced open file after adding the file by clicking on add.

5) issue: when wrong formats are added and error message is thrown up and other playable audio format added the selected file

is not added at the top of the selection box.

6) issue : clicking on '?'(help) wrong  mark and unable to take the help.

7) we can select the subtitles file but no help is displayed which file format should be selected

8) clicking on the show more options displays more options. Unable to get what is Edit options :dvdnav-caching=300

9 ) clicking on network option in advance options. It has a text bos where we can enter an url and view the videos or audio

10) Clicking on Capture device . Has options Direct Show,  DVB direct show, and desktop mode. Unable to move forward as their is no idea about this modes and no help.

11) The advance open file sub menus are repeated again in main Media menu. Then what's the need for advance open file option?

12) checking the menus are opening with the shortcuts provided and it works fine.


13)clicking on  open through clipboard option in media menu displays a test box to copy an url.

issue : No url pasted and clicked on play button shows enter url and closes the textbox.

14 ) clicking on recent media and selecting a file plays well.

b. playback menu :

1. clicking on playback displays menu items where i) previous and ii) next sub menus are enabled and remaining are displayed.
 

Lessons learned :

1. Unable to test the remaining menu items in this session as I keep concentrated on Media menu and little bit on playlist menu.

2. Forgot to take the screen shots. 

3. Came to know Focus - Defocus heuristic from Ajay after this session.

Any feedback on my own testing session are welcome and on how to practice  Quick and Shallow, Slow and Deep in comment section

Next blogpost on testing session  on Adobe Reader soon :)

prudent tester

Questions I Encountered Today.

Today I encountered the situation of power fluctuation in my house and I immediately called the fuse off number and told the situation to him and he responded by asking the questions

 1. Do you have the only problem or others. 2. where is your home located. 3. How long this is happening.

I encountered a situation where the electrician is a tester by asking the questions and reminded the testers asking the questions on the product to test.

So, The theme of the post today is not only at the time of testing the product, we should be able to ask the questions in our real life for problem solving.

Prudent Tester

Participating in my First WT and WTA

I am sharing my experience participating in Weekend Testing and WTA #5.I am very excited to be part of WT50 as it is happened to 50th anniversary.

WT50 session started at 4 pm on 8th of January and lasted till 6:30 pm (IST). The aim is to install fireshot addon for any of the browser and register as a user in the forum and find the root cause and help to fix the issue.  I paired with Nitin and we started to discuss on the issues but Nitin was using LinuxOS and Fireshot was not supported on that OS .He told me to reproduce the issues and he supported me by calling over skype. We found that most of the issues are on windows vista/7 OS , and an older version of fireshot (the latest version being 0.88). The testing session lasted for 1 hour and the remaining 1 hour is for discussion.

The session transcription can be found here . I am excited today as I received 50th WT batch today, designed by cartoon tester.

          The WTA #5 session started at 12:30 A.M (IST) on 16th of January. The eagerness to test an application and what the approach followed by other testers made me to participate in this session. 

The aim of the session is to test a game LightBot. It teaches the person playing the game how to program (or many principles of effective programming). The robot needs to go around the board and light up boxes on the grid. Each level gets progressively more difficult with more obstacles, so the “programmer” needs to keep modifying the “code” to successfully complete each challenge. As  I am testing the game application for the first time, it took sometime to get used to it. I found some issues but they are not in the context of the given mission.  Some testers used error and trial approach. I was at the 6th level when the testing session completed. The discussion started any issues were found and is it helpful for the customer.

It was great experience sharing my ideas to other testers and what the approach other testers followed ,issues they have got when participated in weekend testing sessions.

Testing Session 1 with Ajay

Ajay agreed to demonstrate testing to me on 5th jan 2011 at 9 pm  IST. I was very excited to participate in a session with him. As soon as I logged into skype, Ajay was online. When I was ready he  told me that it will be 1 hour session and each one of us will get 30 mins for testing.

He asked me to install Fireshot addon (http://screenshot-program.com/fireshot/) on available browser and provided typewith.me link to observe his testing notes on what he is doing.

Session started at 9 pm, Ajay took the initiative to demonstrate his testing to me.

Mission :

To learn about Fireshot, which provides screenshot with various options.

Ajay is at very best while demonstrating. He exactly knows what he is doing. He completed his allotted time of 30 mins and he asked me if  I had any questions. I should have asked him the questions and how he tested or what was he thinking.

My session started at 9:30 pm

I opened a website (www.msn.com) and started taking screenshot and testing.While I took screenshot the browser freezed and I used  chrome for typewith.me.That is where I lost the track.The mission was to learn the product, but I was doing something else which  was not necessary. This way I fell into the trap and did not recover from the situation until the session  was completed.

Lessons Learnt :

1. Understand what is the mission.

2. I should have asked more questions on which website to take screenshot and which approach may be useful for me.

3. Understand what is the product all about.

4. Don't jump onto testing directly which I did in this session.

I asked Ajay to have more session for my improvement of testing skills and he accepted for it.

Bug in Coin Box

I came across interesting situation today when I met a person who told me calling with 50 paisa coin instead of 1 rupee in coin box . He inserted 50 paisa coin in the box and lifted to an angle from bottom end of the box and to my surprise the box accepted the coin and allowed to start conversation.This makes me feel that the coin box has been not tested upto the mark.

Note: This post is for demonstration of bug present in the coin box only and not for any other purpose.