WebQA: No test day this week

Posted by on 09.08.2011 No comments

Hello all,

A late update for tomorrows WebQA hosted test day, Friday 9.9.11.  WebQA won’t be hosting a test day this week. I had planned on a day of working to expand the Selenium coverage on Socorro (aka Breakpad … aka Crashstats).  Of the many reasons I can think of it mainly comes down to I’ve been overrun with work and can’t sustainably host this tomorrow.  This is not to say that the backlog of tests to be automated is small, in fact with the help of Tobias Markus (our wonderful intern) it has ceaselessly grown as he’s dug through the existing testcases during his gap analysis.

I’m absolutely encouraged by the amount of interesting testcases that could use automation and look forward to having a formal testing day arranged for this project soon.

Project links

I look forward to seeing you at future test days and on the irc channels. Feel free to pop in at anytime and say hello.

 

Modifying DNS for testing/dev

Posted by on 06.13.2011 No comments

Recently I needed to find the equivalent of /etc/hosts for Win7. I’ll be honest, my first attempt at poking around Windows was a complete flop. I haven’t worked in a Windows environment in years and I can’t claim that I was remotely a power user at that time.

Let me quickly get to the point of this post, on Win7 there exists a hosts file. I was pleasantly surprised that it functions the same as /etc/hosts on Linux.

c:WINDOWSsystem32driversetchosts

Simply update the with the hosts file with the paths that your need:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
##

# added for testing purposes
63.245.217.71   thisisnotmarkup.mozilla.org
127.0.0.1       expectpants.com

# don't touch
127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost

And test/dev away!

References:
- Krzysztof Kowalczyk

Join us for a testing talk with Lanette Creamer on June 14

Posted by on 06.10.2011 No comments
Lanette Creamer
Mozilla will be hosting a talk by Lanette Creamer, aka, The Testy Redhead on June 14 at 12:00pm which is open to the public and will be streamed live on air.mozilla.com.

Lanette will be speaking about testing for the user experience with workflow testing:

Customers who are so delighted with a product or service that they will tell others are a magnificent asset which every company wishes to retain and attract. While we have many ways to test for code stability, features, and functionality, there are not as many test methodologies that explore reporting on the overall user experience.

Workflow testing is the practical approach that we have applied to testing collaboratively for the user experience. Workflow testing methodology scales from a use case all the way to testing across the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collections. Having an efficient way to holistically report the user experience is an effective way to improve overall product quality. This is especially true in multi-user scenarios which span many features, different applications, and a myriad of operating systems.

In this talk we will share what happened at Adobe, how the same methods used for encouraging collaboration at Adobe were recently modified to work in an old fashioned IT department and also for helping two adult cats adopted from a shelter to get along with a very feisty and ancient resident cat.

Lanette  likes testing even more than Diet Coke and cats. After working for a
decade at Adobe, including leading testing on the Creative Suites,
Lanette has jumped into consulting with both feet. She recently started her own consulting firm, Spark Quality LLC. Throughout her testing career, Lanette has been publicly evangelizing advancement in human test ideas. Deeply passionate about collaboration, she believes it is a powerful solution when facing complex technical challenges.

She has presented at PNSQC, Better Software/Agile Development Practices,
Writing About Testing 1, and STPCon in 2010. In 2011, she presented at
Writing About Testing 2, and looks forward to speaking at CAST in her
home city of Seattle. An active participant in the testing community,
Lanette has written technical papers, and articles for ST&QA Magazine,
and Tea Time for Testers.

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