Trial is expired - Really?

On 14th Feb logged into into 99tests.com and realized that there was a contest happening which I guess failed to notice in my mail. So when I wanted to register for the contest the maximum testers limit had already been reached still I liked the application and was eager to give a shot and started to test the application. We had to download a trial version and while doing it I released that I had the tool already installed in my PC and on further looking in the tool I came to know that the trial period had expired way before.

So, the next challenge immediately that came to my mind was to test the behavior of the application after its trial period expired :)

Started exploring the application and noted down few interesting bugs.

These are some bugs that I found :

1. Click the exe (BrowseEmAll.exe)
- it is displaying the welcome message with the Expired message and three buttons (Continue,Buy Now and Enter License)

Observation : Why should it display the text "Please select 'continue' to begin" when the product has expired.
It can check first for the product license and then decide to display which text to be.

2. Click Enter license,As I dont have valid license - provided some random input

and clicked submit.It says

Questions

 - it clearly says that key is invalid, then why it is expecting user to perform one more step

3. Now click ok to export the file and click Export (Intention is to check what is the file it actually export)

4. It is opening the save as dialog box in which there is a new XML generated.

  - Now it is time to check what are all the details in xml?

and the XML is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Surety xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Keyset>Surety</Keyset>
  <InstallGuid>00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000</InstallGuid>
  <InstallKey />
  <Version>none</Version>
  <InstallIdentifiers>
    <InstallIdentifier>
      <IdentifierType>MachineName</IdentifierType>
      <HashedValue>qWASGhm2XM/+Efb9duyjFst3hlMsq5qNqKqBchoalpI=</HashedValue>
    </InstallIdentifier>
  </InstallIdentifiers>
  <ValidationStatus>false</ValidationStatus>
</Surety>


  - and workaround with the dialog box buttons save and cancel

5. For both the actions save and cancel it says File successfully created, and the word successfully misspelled here

6. Okay now tried with different steps, lets close the window (Welcome to BrowsEmAll), WOW!..What a surprise closing that is opening the app and i can still use the application after my trial period expiration. Yes it is allowing me to do testing!!

Culprit can be exist at any form :)

As part of my new project I had a chance to work on a flash application. While testing out on various browsers for few days, all of a sudden the flash content did not load in Firefox.

I did check in other systems having similar OS and Browser versions. I also checked for

1. Flash player version.

2. Other versions of Firefox.

3. Different OS,Browsers (In some combination the flash content did work and for some the it did not load).

After few days while having a chat with Ajay, I came to know about a site to find existence of flash player and its version. Using that tool I checked in all the browsers and got the message "Flash is available" other than Firefox. So Started to explore more on it and decided that I should make the flash content load in Firefox.

1. In the site ,While installing flash player I was directed to step 4.

2. I navigated to step 4 and came across a sentence which read "If you have issues with Flash Player 11.3 on Mozilla Firefox, see Issues" (My Firefox version was 17.0).

3. I Clicked on the "See Issues" link and in that page saw the text "Rich media content doesn't appear if Real Player is installed"

Crap !..i just installed real player some days ago, and that was the reason why my flash content did not open up suddenly. 

Lesson learnt : The culprit can be at any form, finding it using right tools, and exploring more will make job easier.

Which step am I in the testing ladder ?

Hi All , This blog post will speak of various testing activities I was part of which had been of great impact to my career.

I can divide my testing career as before Bug deBug and after Bug deBug.

During my job hunting days, I would read all the testing interview questions from the net for the interview. In one such interview, I came to know about a testing conference which was going to happen in Chennai. Out of interest and curiosity, I attended my first testing conference, Bug deBug.

Before attending this conference, I was thinking that testers job is only executing the test cases, just meet the organizational expectations and discuss with the testers who are in my team and continue the work.

After I attended the conference, I realized that the importance of practicing testing and then on my opinion and view towards testing changed.

So, I decided to start learning and practicing by the following ways,

1. Joined Chennai Testing Group
2. Registered with 99tests.com
3. Participated in weekendtesting.com
4. Reading Testing Blogs,Magazines and Books
5. Giving presentation within my team.
6. Completed my Testing Certification
7. Writing my own testing blog

ChennaiTesting Group

Being a member in ChennaiTesting Group, I have got a chance to network with testers across various companies. There is lots of learning and sharing which takes place in this group.

The best part of Chennai Testing Group is it conducts monthly tester's meet in various corporate organizations,which is a successful and energetic event. In Every meet there is something to learn and lots of healthy discussions.

This monthly meet has enabled testers in chennai to bond in a much better way and help each other professionally.

This group has entered into its 4^th year and has been very effective and useful for testers. I would strongly recommend testers and people who are interested in testing to join this chennai testing group.

99Tests.com

Its been exactly one year I was with 99tests.com.

My Experiences and Learnings in 99tests.com are as follows:-

1.My Vision towards testing an application and thought process has been improved.

99tests.com has provision of accessing other tester's bug from there we can observe how other tester's are exploring the applications and their reporting skills.

I was amazed to see the amount of effort tester's are putting for the competitions. Ajay was one such person and his learning can be read in his blog. Now, Sudhamshu has also started to focus on security related issues

This will surely Motivate other testers and make them learn more.

2.Experience with different kind of app. (No Domain Constraint)

99tests.com announces competition covering a range of applications such as Shopping Portal, App for conference,Mobile Application and many more. Hereafter I will not say I have experience only on specific domain :)

3.Managing Time and Prioritize the tasks

As 99tests.com brings a purely competitive mode, as a tester I can manage my time in terms of identifying and reporting Bugs.

While going through some testing blogs I came across this phrase : “Testing is an idea generation activity, rather than a plan implementation activity.”

Yes, 99tests.com provides platform for the testers to think,explore, observe and report.


And i m happy to inform you all that i bagged the first place in one of the recent contest in 99tests.com :)

and above all we can earn some extra money by doing something we like. :)

Weekendtesting.com

I wish to participate for every week. Laziness and lack of prioritizing the weekend activities I could not able to attend this on regular basis.

In a year only once I was a part of weekendtesting.com and I am damn sure that it will really help testers to think more on the given application.

Hope in this Year, I will take part in this regularly.

Testing Blogs,Magazines and Books

After coming from the Bug De Bug, I had a list of good software testing books for reference. As a first step towards my learning process I ordered the “lessons learned from Software Testing”.

TestingCircus is the first magazine which I started to read, later I found there are other magazines too which speaks testing such as Testingplanet, Professional Tester, Tea Time with Testers and TestingExperience

Had a Folder of tester's Blog in My Bookmarks bar with most of the tester's blogs in it and updating myself by reading those.

Presentation in my Team

Had a chance to present a paper on SBTM Tools. The Learning of SBTM will come as another blog entry :)

The habit of talking to various testers and reading related blogs helped me to prepare for the presentation.

This helped me to overcome stage fear and improve my presentation skills.


Completed my ISTQB Certification

I have completed my ISTQB Foundation Level Certification with 80% for which I was able to easily prepare with my experience and learnings.

This blog is outcome of the various activities which I have mentioned above.

As learning is a never ended process, I request my fellow testers to practice testing, attend testing conferences and workshops.

I would not have come this far if I had missed the Bug deBug conference. Thanks to bharath for letting me know.

Waiting for the next Bug deBug announcement.

Happy Testing!..

Chennai Testers Monthly MeetUp - 7

Hi All,

Here I'm sharing some of my takeaways from the Chennai Testers Monthly Meet.  

CTMM 7 was organized in Aspire System – Siruseri IT Park.

The event started exactly at 10AM with the introduction speech from Sathish from RIA-RUI, This was followed by a welcome Speech, by Mr.Shankar Krishnamoorthy, CTO Aspire Systems. After his speech all the participants introduced themselves to the group that helped us to network more easily.

Later Vasu Swaminathan from Aspire gave his speech on Knowledge Transition in New Assignments– Challenges and How to overcome them

Some keypoints from his speech

1.How KT is important for a tester.

2.He was explaining about Explicit Knowledge and Tacit Knowledge.

3.“Tacit knowledge” is the knowledge that is sitting in people's / group of people’s head who have been working on the project / product in depth.

4.Getting KT from people having these “Tacit Knowledge” is Important for testing and test coverage.

5.Think according to, how customers / customers customer will use the system.

And he explained how socializing helps to extract the knowledge.

Further to that

1.Identifying the knowledge holder is the primary task.

2.Ask the right Question and not repeat the question.

3.Walk through the existing defects ( it will help to gain knowledge on the application)

4.Have a brainstorming session with the team members.

5.Applying the knowledge transferred

6.Validate your understanding.

7.Be Qualified to write bugs

8.Write good description in Writing defect.

The participants were very active during his speech and fired few interesting and practical questions which every tester would face when they join a new project / company.

After Vasu’s speech, We had tea break where participants were given nice cookies and cofee/tea.

After the tea break, Murali started his presentation. The presentation actually holds the general Topic “How to stay Positive in a tough Environment”.

Here i'm sharing the quote which I liked the most from his presentation.

“When we do what we choose to do, we are committed”

“When we do what we have to do, we are complaint.”

The next two sessions were more of participant’s interaction; the next session was problem on the table.

The Problem posted here was “There is an application which runs only in one old machine and it has developed by one person, he has left the office now. That had been developed in VB and had some mathematical calculation. If the current team wants to use the application with the absence of the creator, what are all the best way to explore the application? ”

There were so many discussions, and concluded that,

1.If we maintain a document for the application, then it will be very easy for understanding and exploring.

2.The experienced VB programming guy and the Math Stuff guy can understand it easily and give everyone an understanding of the application and make it more easier to work.

Then we were moved to the last session which was a testing Debate.

Topic : Documentation is necessary for QA Documents Yes / No

Surprisingly, all were accepted that Documentation is necessary and also the group accepted that failure to writing documentation makes the job painful.

Some of the Keypoints from the debate are:

1.Documenting the “Lessons learned” Document after Releasing any product is must.

2.Documentation should be time – specific and relevant

3.Communication between the Onsite Client and the team should be documented.

4.Whatever communicated among the team should be documented (Via phone,chat and etc.,)

5.Need to have proper Management Team

The meet ended with a great lunch, which was a great opportunity for networking among the participants.

Here I would like to thank Aspire for conducting this month ITB Meet and providing transportation for the participants.

Image Courtesy : http://www.facebook.com/BugdeBug

Usability Bug in Gmail Settings

Today i was just thought of going through Gmail Labs. Just to find out if there is any new labs Google introduced.

So, i was scrolling down using my mouse Scroll Wheel (Used for fast scroll)

I have found some weird thing happened. I can able to scroll down down down... and its keep on going..The page never gets end :)

and if i scroll up, the page alignment changes like below.

The Purpose of using scroll wheel in gmail Fails :(

Image Courtesy : http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Using-your-mouse and My Gmail

Welcome to My Blog

Hi..

This is Jahira. A Tester who is in the process of learning.

By the way i'l post here my Learning and Experiences the way i go...

Cheers.