Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Habits of Highly Effective Negative Testers

1) First check if all the tabs, menus and links are displaying proper pages
2) Put negative numbers into text fields
3) Put ridiculously long strings anywhere you can,
4) Paste inappropriate stuff - like binary files into text boxes
5) Open 13 instances of your app at once
6) Unplug the network or the power in the middle of an important flow
7) Change the system date and time
8) Install on a system way below the minimum specs
9) Use weird characters like ì È Ö
10) Run 10 other apps while you are testing
11) Delete crucial files
12) Don't close other applications before proceeding
13) Press submit button in all the forms for more than one time and see
the application response
14) Try to login with case sensitive passwords
15) Close your Browser while doing any uploading or submitting in the application
16) Test with low bandwidth networks
17) Change the parameter id’s displayed in the URL
18) View for Application icon in browser address bar
19) Check with the displayed error messages through out the application
20) Check whether the user can find on which page he is now (i-e) Application
have to highlight the current page

Friday, March 20, 2009

Tips to Capture “Unable to reproduce issues”

A Very challenge thing to a Software Tester is if he posted one critical issues by spending more time, then the developer will simply add comment as “Unable to reproduce”.
At this stage we have to fight with the developer by adding more screenshots or by conducting meetings to explain how to reproduce the issue.
Now a simple way comes to capture a defect in the application. Using this we can record how to reproduce the issue.

http://www.screentoaster.com/


1) Go to the above site and register as a new user
2) Login to the application and click Start Recording button
3) It will display Record button
4) Now go to your application and click “Alt+S”
5) Try your scenario to reproduce the issue
6) After reproducing the issue click “Alt+S” and go to screen toaster
7) Click stop recording
8) Now the video to reproduce your issue is ready to view

You can upload the video into screen toaster and you will get a URL for that
You can upload it in YouTube
You can download the video in “AVI” and “SWF” formats

Now attach the video or give the link while reporting the issue. Developers will not say “Unable to reproduce” after seeing this video.

For your reference I have attached a video to explain about how to record a video to capture an issue.
I have recorded the scenario in login page of “YouTube”

http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stU0ldRkRIR1pYRVlcXF9RUFVX/how_to_record_a_video

“Happy Testing”

Useful Tips for Testing

In this article we can discuss about some useful tips that are used for software testing.
While testing a web application, there will be some clone sites available for that application.
First we need to check the functionality of the clone site to know more about the application. At that time we need to register in that clone site and then only we can able to proceed. But now a site is giving sample login details for all the famous sites. Link for the site is

http://www.bugmenot.com/

Using this site we can get sample login details for any popular sites and it will be more useful while testing.
For Ex: If you are going to study about the functionality of “YouTube”, but you don’t have login details for YouTube. At this time you can use this above site to get sample details for YouTube.
Check out some sample login details in the below link,

http://www.bugmenot.com/view/youtube.com

Using this logins you can enter into “YouTube” as a registered user.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Categories of Defect

While posting a defect we have to choose appropriate category for the defect.
If you are using any bug tracking tool, then it will be mandatory to select category for the defect while posting. Here we can see how many categories are available for a defect,

1) Functionality Issues
2) Logical Issues
3) Designing Issues
4) Flash Issues
5) Errors
6) Compatibility Issues
7) Usability Issues
8) User Interface Issues
9) Textual Errors
10)Documentation Issues
11) Validation Errors
12) Feature Additional
13) Suggestions
14) Query
15) Enhancements

If you know more categories of defects, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

User Interface Testing

User Interface Testing:

User interface testing is defined as to test the interface between the application and the end user.
Here we will see how to test a simple form for user interface testing.



Steps for User Interface Testing:

1) Check with the spellings for all the labels
2) Check whether the Tab sequence is working properly in all the fields
3) Anyone option have to be selected as default in the Radio box
4) Able to select the options in the radio box by using right and left
arrows in the keyboard
5) Select option have to display as default in the combo box
6) It will not allow to enter a new option in the combo box
7) We can able to select the options in the list by using up and down
arrows in the keyboard
8) “ * “symbol have to display in all the mandatory fields
9) By clicking submit button without entering any texts, it have to
display error message in mandatory fields
10) By Clicking Cancel button it have to display the previous or home page
11) Font size should be proper as per the requirement
12) Font style should be proper as per the requirement
13) Spaces between the texts and the fields should be proper

If you know more about User Interface Testing, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.

Monday, March 9, 2009

How to test a Text Box

Listed below are the scenarios to test a text box in an application,

1) Check with the requirement whether it will accept numeric and special characters

2) Enter” HTML tag” and click save button
If it displays the entered texts means there is no defect.
If it converts the HTML tags and displays the message only means there is a defect

3) Enter “Java Script” and click save button
If it displays the entered texts means there is no defect.
If it converts the Script and displays the message only means there is a defect

4) Copy and paste a “Embed code” for a video from You Tube and click save button
If it displays the entered texts means there is no defect.
If it displays the video for that code means it is defect

5) Enter “Profile layout codes” and click save button
Ex : take code from http://www.pimpmyarea.com/getcode.php?style=archivos_css/movies2.css
If it displays the entered texts means there is no defect.
If it changes the design of the page means it is defect

6) Test With Boundary value conditions for the given character limitation
Ex: If it accepts 1 to 10 characters
Then Test with 0, 1,2,9,10,11
It will not accept 0 and 11 characters, if it accepts then there is an defect

7) Test by entering “Spaces” in the prefix and suffix of the entered character
It has to trim the spaces and have to display the texts properly

8) Test by entering “single quotes and double quotes”
It will result in Database error

9) Enter a text within Double quotes and click save button
Ex: “Testing”
Sometimes it will not show the entered text in the text box

10) Copy and Paste long texts from word or notepad
Ex: If the characters are limited between 1 to 10, then it will not allow to type text more than 10 characters, Some times copy texts from word document which have 15 characters and paste it in the text box, it will allow.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

How to find broken links in a website

If you are testing web based applications, then it is necessary to find the broken links in the website.

Links which is not redirected to proper pages or not showing any output page is known as broken links.

Listed below are the online tools to find broken links in your application

1) http://validator.w3.org/checklink
2) http://htmlhelp.com/tools/valet/

Other than these tools there is one tool called “Xenu” also used to find the broken links. But you have to install it in your local system. Here is the link to download “Xenu”

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Other-Internet-Related/Xenu-Link-Sleuth.shtml

These tools will not give you all the broken links in your website. Normally manual testing of a application is far better than testing with the help of tools.

If you know more about the tools to find broken links, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.

Monday, March 2, 2009

What is “character set” and how to test “Character Set”:

Character set: A defined list of characters recognized by the computer hardware and software. Each character is represented by a number.The ASCII character set, for example, uses the numbers 0 through 127 to represent all English characters as well as special control characters.



How to test Character set:

Scenario 1:

1) If you have admin rights for your web application, you can see an option for changing character set in main settings field. It will be normally displayed as “UTF-8”
2) Now Go to the site and change the UTF set in your browser via View--character encoding--more encoding--UTF-16
After choosing the UTF-16 check whether the texts in the site displayed properly or not?




Scenario 2:
1) Change the character set from UTF-8 into UTF-16 in admin and save changes
2) Now go to the site and change the UTF set and language to check whether site displays the texts properly or not.
To change language go to View--character encoding--Auto detect



Scenario 3:
1) After changing UTF character set in admin, check with the pop up’s and flash players in the site.
2) Sometimes change in UTF character set will results in pop up display and flash player display in the site (i.e.) pop up’s in the site and player will not display properly

Note: Test the above scenarios in all the major browsers.

If you know more about character set and testing of character set, kindly write down in comments section or send an e-mail to me.