Release of two more books

We have a competition at office - a quarterly one. You are free to work on any idea for 24 hours. No meetings, no work, no deadlines. At the end of the day (which is usually a Friday), you get ready to present your idea and its implementation before the judges.

Book 1: Mobile Testing: Ready Reckoner
So, in the event held few days ago, I and my friend Sundaresan Krishnaswami wrote a book on Mobile Testing. We admire Jonathan Kohl's book 'Tap into Mobile Applications' a lot and have learnt a lot from the book. We needed a ready reckoner - a very short book and we created it based on our readings, testing experiences, competition experiences and feedback from other testers.

Each page is designed in such a way that an idea is explained with the help of a screenshot. We have also added the learning and resources link if necessary. As a tester or a mobile enthusiast, you can open any page and apply the idea immediately.
You can print the entire book and have it as a pocket calendar. The book size fits the pocket.

Book 2: UI and UX Testing: Ready Reckoner

This book is also in the ready reckoner format. A screenshot followed by explanation of the idea. Fits into pocket, go-to book before any testing competition or a quick reference when you run out of ideas.

Download from bit.ly/booksaj

Leia Mais…

The Perimeter Test: A new test idea?

We have bug bashes in our company. In every release, the tester invites other testers to test his/her feature. Fresh eyes, different experience usually helps in bringing new test ideas and bugs to the forefront. I usually participate in such bug bashes as it exposes me to different features and test ideas. It is a good opportunity to practice testing and a good break from regular testing too.

In one such testing session, I found a bug where the button was tapped even though I did not tap the button. On further investigation, I realized that the focus of the button was much more than the button area. Let me highlight the issue with the help of the following image.

On the left image, we have a problem. The button's perimeter is displayed by red color.
But when the user taps or clicks anywhere within the green rectangle, the button is still clicked.

On the right image, the focus of the button is limited to the area highlighted by red color. On tapping or clicking outside the red area, the button is not activated.

How do we usually test such buttons?

• Clicking on the button
• Changing the state of the button - enabled/disabled
• Test the default state of the button
• Combining the button action with other actions

What am I proposing?

I want to include a test to click around the button to check if the focus of the button is restricted to the button area or extends outside the button area. According to me, the name for the test idea: "The Perimeter Test".  

Why this bug is important:

a. The user might not know that the click outside the button behaves similar to click on the button.

b. It would be confusing if there is little space between adjacent buttons. The user will not know which button was clicked.

c. The trust on the application's behavior is reduced as the user is not sure of what to expect.

I would like to highlight the Perimeter Test's importance on mobile devices and areas where multiple buttons are placed close by. Try 'Inspect element' on the button and discover the area quickly. Also, the Perimeter Test might not take more time. A quick test to highlight an important bug.

I am happy to give the test idea a name and hope to come up with more such test ideas.

What do you think about 'The Perimeter Test'?

Just to confirm: This is different from "Boundary Testing technique".

Leia Mais…

Tap Into Mobile Application Testing by Jonathan Kohl

One of the good things about working in a cool company like www.maas360.com is that the management cares about learning opportunity for its employees. It understands that if the company has to be at the top, the employees have to work on their skills. One of the easy ways is to provide access to resources which will help the employees - books, conferences, contests, tutorials, memberships and so on. This is very easy to do but very few companies encourage such learning opportunity.

As soon as I got to know about the book https://leanpub.com/testmobileapps by Jonathan Kohl, I wanted to read it. The request was approved and I got a chance to read the book on the same day.

As seen on the site, the book covers a wide range of topics necessary to know about mobile app testing.

What did I learn from this book:
Reading the book was a very good experience. Every page had something new. I liked the initial chapters a lot compared to the strategy, planning chapters. I wanted to read this book on my mobile phone - landscape mode using QuickOffice Reader. This experience helped me find some bugs in QuickOffice Reader application and I could also experience using a mobile app.

Examples of different types of bugs
I like the books where the authors don't just mention what to do but also highlight their experience when they followed their own advice. Jonathan Kohl does a great job in highlighting his experiences in testing different types of mobile apps and what kid of bugs he found. Some of his bug stories are like the detective puzzles and teach you a lot.

What's inside a mobile and how it can affect tests
To be honest, I knew very little about the mobile hardware before starting this book compared to now when I am writing this blog post. You regularly move your mobile but are you aware of which sensors are affected? Do you have any idea of how your test results are indirectly and to some extent, directly affected by the mobile hardware? This book has a dedicated chapter and is a good starter for someone like me.

Different Tours
Though there are many tours mentioned in this book, I like the Gesture tour. Pinch/Tap/Flick/Swipe/Press - Which gesture do you like? I tried few of the gestures and found bugs specific to them. There are many different types of tours mentioned in this book. Ok, he not only mentions them but also explains as to how to conduct each tour.

Testing Mnemonics for Mobiles
Jonathan Kohl - creator of I SLICED UP FUN mnemonic also explains about few other mnemonics in this book. As a tester, its good to know such mnemonics so that you can apply them as and when required instead of thinking of new tests every time.

Dealing with Intermittent bugs
This topic is not new to many testers. James Bach talks about such bugs here - www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/34 BBST course - Bug Advocacy section too highlights tips to tackle such bugs. www.testingeducation.org/BBST Jonathan Kohl talks about intermittent bugs found during testing mobile apps. Small distractions, movements, network changes, orientation differences - how can they affect the bugs - the topic covers them all.

The book is worth the cost. Hope Jonathan writes more such books and continue to help the testing community. Thanks Jonathan Kohl.

Leia Mais…

Perfecto Mobile - An Overview

As I had promised last month on twitter about a blog post on my experience with Perfecto Mobile, here it is.
What is Perfecto Mobile? 
To quote them,

Perfecto Mobile is a global leading provider of cloud-based testing, automation and monitoring solutions for mobile applications and websites, utilizing a wide selection of REAL mobile devices accessible via the web.

 So, I got interested in knowing more about them & wanted to use their services.
And they amazed me with their demo, the services offered and the support.

A demo was scheduled and I was briefed through the entire list of features:
* Selection of handsets
* Actions which can be performed on the handsets
* Automation - How to simulate some of the user actions
and most important of all, I was shown a real device and not some simulator!
The actions we performed were on a REAL MOBILE DEVICE.

For someone like me who always heard of simulators & tested on simulators, this was amazing - actions reflected on a REAL device.
I agree that it is different than testing on a physical device but according to me, it is effective than testing on a emulator.

So, once the demo was over, I got few free hours to play around. Special thanks to Sveta for the demo which included a lot of questions from my side. She answered each one of them to my satisfaction.

I was very excited to see if what was demoed actually works !!! Yes, I am a tester - a tester who likes to test to my satisfaction before endorsing a product. I recommend Hexawise, Rapid Reporter and now Perfecto Mobile

With free hours added to my account, I started exploring. I have a Nokia E63 and I was more interested in trying out features of E63.

I did a freestyle exploratory testing session of Perfecto Mobile. Wish I had learnt using Rapid Reporter before testing Perfecto Mobile!

Feel free to go through my overview of Perfecto Mobile.
CLICK HERE to view the report.

As a concluding note, I would like to highlight the advantages of Perfecto Mobile services.
I have tested an iPhone app on a simulator, found bugs which were not present on the actual device. Also, I could not reproduce the bugs found on iPhones on the simulator. Can you see the difference?

Testing on Emulators, Simulators is not equal to testing on REAL DEVICES.
Make use of the services provided by Perfecto Mobile - Variety of handsets, ease of use and most important - you can share your testing activities real-time.

TEST it yourself to BELIEVE it.  

Useful Links:
Perfecto Mobile website
Perfecto Brochure

PS: Let me search for what's an emulator & what's a simulator!

Leia Mais…