Web application testing.

 Web-based applications present new challenges, these challenges include:
- Short release cycles;
- Constantly Changing Technology;
- Possible huge number of users during initial website launch;
- Inability to control the user’s running environment;
- 24-hour availability of the web site.The quality of a website must be evident from the Onset. Any difficulty whether in response time, accuracy of information, or ease of use-will compel the user to click to a competitor’s site. Such problems translate into lost of users, lost sales, and poor company image.To overcome these types of problems, use the following techniques: 

1. Functionality Testing 

Functionality testing involves making sure the features that most affect user interactions  work properly. These include:
· forms
· searches
· pop-up windows
· shopping carts
· online payments 

2. Usability Testing

Many users have low tolerance for anything that is difficult to use or that does not work. A user spends approximately 6 seconds in deciding whether the site good for use or not. A user’s first impression of the site is important, and many websites have become cluttered with an increasing number of features. For general-use websites frustrated users can easily click over a competitor’s site. Usability testing involves following main steps
· identify the website’s purpose;
· identify the indented users;
· define tests and conduct the usability testing
· analyze the acquired information

3. Navigation Testing

Good Navigation is an essential part of a website, especially those that are complex and provide a lot of information. Assessing navigation is a major part of usability Testing.

4. Forms Testing 

Websites that use forms need tests to ensure that each field works properly and that the forms posts all data as intended by the designer.

5. Page Content Testing

Each web page must be tested for correct content from the user perspective for correct content from the user perspective. These tests fall into two categories: ensuring that each component functions correctly and ensuring that the content of each is correct

6. Configuration and Compatibility testing 

key challenge for web applications is ensuring that the user sees a web page as the designer intended. The user can select different browser software and browser options, use different network software and on-line service, and run other concurrent applications. We execute the application under every browser/platform combination to ensure the web sites work properly under various environments.

7. Reliability and Availability testing

A key requirement of a website is that it Be available whenever the user requests it, after 24-hours a day, every day. The number of users accessing web site simultaneously may also affect the site’s availability.

8. Performance Testing:

Testing performance of the software in terms of the degree to which the system or component accomplishes its designated functions within given constraints regarding processing time and throughput rate.
Performance Testing, which evaluates System performance under normal and heavy usage, is crucial to success of any web application. A system that takes for long to respond may frustrate the user who can then quickly move to a competitor’s site. Given enough time, every page request will eventually be delivered. Performance testing seeks to ensure that the website server responds to browser requests within defined parameters.

9. Load Testing

The purpose of Load testing is to model real world experiences, typically by generating many simultaneous users accessing the website. We use automation tools to increases the ability to conduct a valid load test, because it emulates thousand of users by sending simultaneous requests to the application or the server.

10. Stress Testing

Stress Testing consists of subjecting the system to varying and maximum loads to evaluate the resulting performance. We use automated test tools to simulate loads on website and execute the tests continuously for several hours or days.

11. Security Testing

Security is a primary concern when communicating and conducting business- especially sensitive and business- critical transactions – over the internet. The user wants assurance that personal and financial information is secure. Finding the vulnerabilities in an application that would grant an unauthorized user access to the system is important.

Exploratory Testing

Have you ever tested a piece of software that you were not very familiar with? Also, you might not have had the luxury of ready-made test cases at hand and could not afford spending time to write them. Nevertheless you went ahead to test the product and did a quite a good job. If you remember, it required a lot of logical thinking, formulating your thoughts into test cases in real time and concurrently executing them. The all-important question that arises here is- “Is this sort of testing justified and is it productive?” Both these queries were quite well answered when I stumbled on the form of testing called- exploratory testing.According to Cem Kaner who has coined the term “exploratory testing”, “most testers spend 25% of their time doing exploratory testing, with 25% creating and documenting new test cases and 50% doing regression testing (i.e. running old tests).” Let us delve a little further into what exploratory testing is all about.Over the last few years exploratory testing has been recognized as a very powerful and interesting form of testing. Here a test case is designed and executed concurrently, unlike scripted testing (manual or automated), where you have your test cases created prior to actual testing. This from of testing does not really adhere to a pre-defined plan. Please don’t confuse this with “ad hoc” testing, which is looking for defects randomly.
The most important distinction between “ad hoc” testing and exploratory testing is that the former can be carried out by anyone but exploratory testing is a thoughtful approach to testing and driven by logic. It is an intellectually challenging process where one is limited only by ones own imagination and understanding of the software being tested. It provides enough scope to extend the reach of testing to certain areas that cannot be easily accommodated in a scripted test case.James Bach, whose contributions and research works have been instrumental in establishing exploratory testing as a useful test methodology, has identified five key elements that an exploratory tester should focus on:

Product Exploration.
As you discover a product, make a note of its functions, their purpose, types of data processed, and areas of potential instability. How well you comprehend the product, the underlying technologies and the time available will determine the effectiveness with which you perform exploration. As you explore, you should
construct a mental-model of how the product works.

Test Design.
You should decide on strategies related to the way you will test the product, observe results, and make inferences.

Test Execution.
This involves testing the product and observing its behavior. The information gathered should be used to formulate hypotheses about the functionality of the product. It’s also beneficial to document test ideas that occur to you while testing.

Heuristics.
These are a set of rules that help you define what is to be tested and how.

Reviewable Results.
The intention of exploratory testing is to produce results. Once you have produced deliverables that meet the specified requirements you can say that it is complete. From a QA perspective, the deliverables must be reviewable and defensible for certification.

A good point to start exploratory testing is when we come across a new or unstable product or software that has not been tested. It is also useful if you are aiming for fast results, trying to reproduce a bug, simplify defect reports. As the stability of a product increases, it can be complemented by scripted testing- manual or automated.

While scripted tests give you a more detailed idea of the test coverage, especially during regression test cycles, exploratory can unearth new defects and extend your existing test cases. The knowledge gained during exploratory testing can be used to augment scripted testing by setting up a feedback mechanism to update existing test cases or create new ones. Despite the differences in the approaches both these forms of testing are perfectly compatible and go hand-in-hand.

Latest Mac OS Leopard

 

Leopard, the latest release of Mac OS X, is loaded with features that let you do more with less effort.The new look of Leopard showcases your favorite desktop image and puts new file stacks at your fingertips for a stunning, clutter-free workspace.

Desktop

The most useful new features in Leopard: Stacks. A stack is a Dock item that gives you fast access to a folder of files. When you click a stack, the files within spring from the Dock in a fan or a grid, depending on the number of items (or the preference you set). Leopard starts you off with two premade stacks: one for downloads and the other for documents. The Downloads stack automatically captures files downloaded from Safari, Mail, and iChat, and the Documents stack is a great place to keep things like presentations, spreadsheets, and word processing files. You can create as many stacks as you wish simply by dragging folders to the right side of your Dock.

Realistic Desktop items

The new desktop has a semitransparent menu bar and a reflective 3D Dock that perfectly frame your desktop picture — whether you use one of the beautiful included images or customize it with a favorite from your iPhoto library. The Dock has a bright active-application signal, and the look of Leopard extends to all applications. Every window has a consistent design theme, and active applications are even more distinct, casting deeper shadows.

Finder 

Now browsing the files on your Mac is as easy as browsing music in iTunes. That’s the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. You can access everything on your system by flipping through your files using Cover Flow or by clicking items in an iTunes-style sidebar Now you can actually see your files in the Finder — not just as icons, but as they really look. Using Cover Flow, you can flip through your documents as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays each file as a large preview of its first page, and you can click through multipage documents or play movies. 

Sidebar

Leopard brings new power to your old friend, the sidebar. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches — just like the Source list in iTunes. So with a single click, you’re on your way to finding what you need.

Connections

With shared computers automatically displayed in the sidebar, you can find files on any Mac or PC on your network. You can even use Spotlight and Cover Flow when you search another Mac. But here’s where things get really interesting. When you click a connected Mac, you can use screen sharing (if authorized, of course) — which lets you do anything you could do if you were sitting in front of that computer. Change a system preference, publish an iPhoto album, or add a new play list to iTunes.

 Search

Combine Cover Flow with Spotlight and you’ve got one amazingly powerful search tool. Just type your keywords in Spotlight or specify search criteria, then browse through the search results using Cover Flow. You can easily save your searches for future use. Or use the prebuilt searches in the sidebar, such as Yesterday or All Images. You’ll soon be doing less searching and more finding.

Which is thinnest notebook ever….?

 

In my previous post on “MacBook Air” it was assumed that this is thinnest notebook ever. Apple boasts that the MacBook Air is the world’s thinnest notebook. But there are few notebooks already in the market which are thinner than MacBook Air. Yes, this is true. The discussion is on about which is thinnest notebook ever.  

The competitors are Mitsubishi Pedion & Sharp’s Muramasa.      

    Cnet’s Michael Kanellos found this fact with the help of an outside party. While no one argues that the Air is the thinnest notebook on the market today, Kanellos took on a historical perspective and found some even thinner notebooks from years past. Kanellos was ready to hand the crown to the Mitsubishi Pedion, which is 0.7244 inches thick at its thickest point, to the Air’s 0.76 inches. a physics professor at Louisiana State University pointed out that one of the laptops from Sharp’s Muramasa line was significantly thinner. The Actius MM10 Muramasa came out in 2003 and measured just 0.54 inches thick, about a third thinner than either the Pedion or the Air.

Bugs and emotions

Do you know what role a software bug can play in your life? Here is a example by Pradeep Soundararajan , which will can explain what can happen if a software used has bugs:

A Software Tester’s story:

After deciding to get married, I floated my profile across various matrimonial websites in India. Matrimonial websites in India are as popular as dating websites in western countries and the net savvy generation of India who decides to get married, try to find their partner over such matrimonial portals.The current generation is pretty much aware that they need to diversify their search and hence they register in all websites that provide an online matrimonial service. Myself being a part of the same generation and moreover a rapid tester who knows that I need to diversify too, I did it.I floated my profile across several matrimonial websites or in other words diversified my search. And the story begins…Each of these websites send updates and information about new people getting registered or brief profile information, matching hard coded criteria of a partner to an e-mail id that a user specified during registration with these websites.

I did get a lot of automated e-mails about new people registering and about people who are matching my hard coded partner search. I was skeptic about these websites as they would spam my inbox and hence created a different e-mail id for partner search and used that for registration. I am now happy that I used a different e-mail id for registering with those websites.

On reading one such e-mail which claimed to have a list of people who matched my hard coded criteria, I found a link – to login and look for more such profiles. I clicked the link and it took me to login page. I used the e-mail id and password to login.

“Congratulations, you have successfully expressed interest to Profile123_XYZ” , flashed on my screen and left me puzzled.

Jesus, I just logged in and I never intended to express interest to someone. I was wondering if I clicked the wrong link. I logged out and looked for a similar e-mail that I received from the same portal and there again I saw a link in the e-mail that says: “Click here to look for similar profiles” . I took a risk of clicking the link and logging in… Bingo, it’s reproducible.

I then had to write to those two people explaining what had happened and apologized in case they might have been hurt by someone expressing interest to marry them and retracting the interest later.

I don’t intend to reproduce that (could be a bug ) more than once and keep playing with emotions of people ( which includes me). The first thing I did is to delete my profile in that specific portal, unregistered with them.
So far, I haven’t seen such a thing happening in other portals that I have registered my profile and kinda feel safe.

There is more than one possibility to such a thing happening:

1. The text in the e-mail was not linked properly.
2. A bug in the program – an integration issue or anything else, too .
3. It might be a mistake of mine too. ( I cross-checked and it appears to me that I did what any other user would and did not click on a link to express interest )
4. Something(s) that I am failing to see.

Bugs that play with emotions:

There is no better context for me than this to explain that bugs play with emotions of people. The lesser the bugs in all products you use the better your health. Such bugs cause a stress/strain to your mental health and you never know that such bugs are slow poison.

In my opinion, under the context explained above, we (testers) make the world better. We catch most of these bugs that could otherwise affect the emotions of people and help them live longer, peacefully.

We aren’t paid for that, either!

Well, here is a little secret of becoming a good tester – Be happy, be humorous and you see you do lot better testing!

I have observed a few discussions from a few testers in few online groups who state, testing as an activity that affects their personal life. Aren’t they FOOLS?

Testers are ones contributing towards making world a better place!Lesser bugs in products, happy is the customer, longer he lives, more he pays, more you get paid Interacting with experts like James Bach, Michael Bolton, and Jerry Weinberg… I realized that they have a great sense of humor and in my opinion that is another reason why they are experts because their humor is always accompanied with a thought process to all who laugh at the joke.A discussion of metrics took place between groups of managers from one of India’s most respected IT company with Michael Bolton when they invited him to their office during his visit to India a few months back. Michael Bolton, in my opinion is not just a test expert but a philosopher too.

The managers there asked Michael Bolton “Is there a better way to measure the health of the project than the metric we are collecting?”

MB: “Oh yes! Check the Blood Pressure of your team members after a meeting or few days away from shipping date”

LOL! Wasn’t he joking and at the same time making sense about a metric that could be more practical than the metric that people collect to check the health of the project?

Jerry Weinberg recently wrote a fairy tale to help test managers learn a lesson. I heard from MB that Jerry Weinberg also used to “smell” the health of the project. My manager once said “Pradeep, please go home, take bath and come back. You are stinking”. I had stayed 3 days 2 nights and that is the kind of pressure that people today work in.

“Jerry, your metric works!”

The experts are all happy people and make others happy because they realize, as testers and as philosophers, they have made/making the world a better place each day.

If you aren’t happy as a tester, it might be because you aren’t aware that you are making the world a better place.

Posted by Pradeep Soundararajan ( testertested.blogspot.com )

Ultra Thin Mac book Air

MacBook Air is nearly as thin as your index finger. Practically every detail that could be streamlined has been. Yet it still has a 13.3-inch widescreen LED display, full-size keyboard, and large multi-touch track pad. It’s incomparably portable without the usual ultra portable screen and keyboard compromises. 

Features

• Thin & full-size.

The thinness of MacBook Air is stirring. But perhaps more impressive, there’s a full-size notebook encased in the 0.16 to 0.76 inch of sleek, sturdy anodized aluminum. And at just 3.0 pounds, 1 MacBook Air is more than portable — it’s with you everywhere you go.

• Track Pad

MacBook Air includes an oversize track pad with multi-touch technology. You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image. This gesture-based input so successful on iPhone and iPod touch now comes to MacBook.

• Full-feature keyboard

The keyboard is full-size with crisp keys just like the ones on MacBook. But MacBook Air goes further by adding backlit key illumination, making it easy to work in low-light settings such as airplanes and conference halls. A built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts keyboard and display brightness for optimal visibility. And with the oversize multi-touch trackpad, it just keeps getting better for fingers.

• Memory

MacBook Air comes with a way-more-than-generous 2GB of RAM built in — ample memory for working with your favorite applications. The 80GB hard drive provides plenty of storage space. And you have the option to upgrade to a 64GB solid-state drive, which has no moving parts for enhanced durability.

• Built-in iSight camera.

Unlike most other ultra portable notebooks, MacBook Air includes a built-in iSight camera. It’s so smartly integrated; you hardly notice it’s there. The iSight camera and iChat software make video chatting easy anywhere there’s a wireless network

• A smart LED display.

The backlit LED display allows for an even thinner build. It provides instant full-screen brightness the moment you open MacBook Air. The mercury- and arsenic-free display is also more power efficient, which translates to longer battery life.

• Micro Chip

MacBook Air performance is as impressive as its form, thanks to its 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This chip was custom-built to fit within the compact dimensions of MacBook Air.

• Battery

The MacBook Air battery is our thinnest ever, yet it doesn’t compromise power. You can access the web wirelessly for five full hours

• Without wires, you’re free to go anywhere.

MacBook Air is the notebook that allows for a fully wireless lifestyle. It all starts with the fastest-available, next-generation 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR built in. And that’s just the beginning of the unprecedented wireless capabilities of MacBook Air.      

Choosing Software Testing as your Career

If you are willing to choose software testing as your career then this is a must read!
Nowadays I get many mails asking me about software testing jobs. Should I select software testing as my career? How to switch to software testing from other job experience? Which institute should I join for testing course? And many more …
I will give a common answer to all these questions whether you should choose software testing as your career or not? Let me first explain in brief about software testing. Software testing and quality control are the processes by means of which application quality is improved. Software testing is done in each phase of product life cycle i.e from requirement specifications, design, coding, to the user acceptance.
Many complex software structures require in depth analytical and technical skill to test the applications. Knowledge of programming languages is required for unit testing, scripting skill essential for Automation testing.
Now we will speak about your career in software testing. No one can guide you choosing your career more than you! Its right and you are the only person to decide your career.
Do self-assessment to figure out where you can fit well. Do study of your skills, interests, strengths, weaknesses.

Ask some questions to your self like:

What is your goal in life?
What will increase your satisfaction and skill?
What is your interest?
Which skills you have developed in your life till now?
Which training you did that can be applied to future job?

By answering these questions you will automatically come to decision.
To switch to software testing career What skills you will require? Is the most important question I think.
In my previous post what makes a good test engineer, I mentioned some of the software testing required skills.

1. Communication: Customer communication as well as team communication most important for this job. Written communication as well!
2. Technical skill: As I mentioned earlier for testing technical domain skill in languages is important.

Some of the Testing skills are:

Project life cycle,
Testing concepts,
Knowledge of testing types,
Programming languages familiarity,
Database concepts,
Test plan idea,
Ability to analyze requirements,
Documentation skill,
Testing tools
3. Leadership quality
4. Analytical and judging skill

Don’t worry if you don’t have some of the skills mentioned above. You can always learn the things if you have interest. Non-IT personas can also grow fast by gaining necessary skills. So finally selecting testing as your career ask one question to yourself:
Are you looking for career in software testing or just a Job?

Best of luck!

Professional characteristics of a good QA (Quality Assurnace) Engineer:

• Understanding of business approach and goals of the organization
• Understanding of entire software development process
• Strong desire for quality
• Establish and enforce SQA methodologies, processes and Testing Strategies
• Judgment skills to assess high-risk areas of application
• Communication with Analysis and Development team
• Report defects with full evidence
• Take preventive actions
• Take actions for Continuous improvement
• Reports to higher management
• Say No when Quality is insufficient
• Work Management
• Meet deadlines

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