Bug in Yahoo Mail Beta!

Once again I am back with yet another Bug! And this time the application is Yahoo! Mail Beta. As the name suggests, this is still in Beta release phase. So a couple of bugs are expected in the software. Any way, we are well aware of the fact that many professional softwares are released with many un-handled open bugs. And this is after all a Beta release.

How ever, before coming to the bug in detail, I must tell you that I have upgraded to Yahoo Mail Beta recently. The idea behind the up-gradation was driven by two major impulses.

1. First, to look for any bug that might (must!) have got passed through the testing phase. I always enjoy finding bugs with professional softwares. This boosts my confidence as a tester. Finding the JavaScript bug in Google Suggest and Bug with IE7 and Mozilla Firefox2 was result of a similar attempt.

2. Second, to check the new look and feel of Yahoo Mail Beta. As a general user, I was curious about the software’s new features. But as a tester, I was more interested in checking the new features of the application. While upgrading I was told about many new cool features. I was particularly interested to see the drag-and-drop and tabbed browsing “features” (did you hear “bugs”?). I seem to have developed a problem with my hearing since I have started my career as a software tester! Whenever someone says “features” it sounds like “bugs” to my ears. :)

My first reaction after the up-gradation was over was “wow, cool tool”! In fact, Yahoo Mail Beta is lot more powerful and feature rich as compared to the older version. The tabbed browsing is a powerful tool, which allows the user to open multiple mails under different tabs under the same window. But things get clumsy after you open a handful of mails under multiple tabs. Try to open around 8-10 mails in tabs, and you will understand what I am trying to tell!

Next cool feature is the ability to drag and drop mails into different folders. I could select multiple mails by holding down key and could drop them into different folders. And this feature looked flawless. Then I thought of dragging and dropping folders into another folders. This was an interesting test idea, as this would mean creating sub-folders under main folders (Considering the fact that Yahoo Mail Beta does not allow us to create sub-folders). For this I created few custom folders, as I didn’t want to mess up with the default folders (like Inbox, Drafts, Sent etc.). But interestingly, Yahoo Mail Beta did not allow me to drag and drop a folder into another folder and the test case passed!

But sometimes passing of a test case may lead to revelation of a related bug. And exactly that happened in this case. As I was testing the drag and drop feature with folders, I got this bug. This is an excellent example where I could catch a bug using “exploratory testing”. I am not sure if I could have caught the same bug using “scripted testing” though.

Prerequisites:
You must have upgraded to Yahoo! Mail Beta.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Log on to Yahoo Mail Beta with your existing Yahoo mail Id and Password.

2. Click on any folder (Inbox, Draft, Sent etc) in the left-most pane, hold down your left mouse button and drag it till the title bar of your browser [must be something like: ("xyz" unread) Yahoo Mail Beta, "Your Yahoo Id" - Windows Internet Explorer] and release your mouse button.

3. Now move your mouse pointer.

My Observation:
You would notice that the mouse pointer is showing the folder name with a RED cross symbol. Please refer attached screenshots. The mouse pointer was not captured while taking the screenshots though (Could this be a bug with Microsoft :), which does not allow us to take the screenshot of the mouse pointer and cursor). So you will see the folder name only.

Reproducibility:

Easily reproducible.

When I tried to drill down this bug further I noticed that clicking on a folder (say Inbox) and dragging and dropping another folder (say Draft) till the title bar, results in the mouse pointer getting associated with the first folder name (i.e. Inbox). Try it yourself.

I would be glad to see you trying it yourself and see if you can reproduce this or not. In the process if you get any more interesting properties of the bug, do let me know through Comments. In the meanwhile, I will try to test other features of Yahoo Mail Beta. If I am able to find any more bugs/glitches I will blog about them in future.

Happy Testing …

Update: You can view the enlarged versions of the screenshots by clicking here and here. (Allow the pages to download fully. Then click on the image to ZOOM!)

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Tags: Article, Bugs, Lessons Learned, Quality, Software Testing, Tutorial

Could this be a BUG with IE7 and Mozilla Firefox2?

Recently, I received an email from Akhilesh Ghildiyal (who is a regular reader of my posts and also a software tester), about the presence of a bug in “Software Testing Zone”! When I saw the subject line (Bug in your blog), my heart stopped beating for a moment, thinking of yet another bug in my blog. Because, just now I had got rid of the Invisible Bug after 17 days of hard work! How ever, here is the excerpt of his email.

Hi Debasis,

I have found out a bug in your blogs ( http://software-testing-zone.blogspot.com/ and http://software-quality-testing.blogspot.com/ ). The bug is in the Sticky Notes section of your blogs. Sticky Notes in which you make your readers to Shout.

Bug Description:
The data you input in details of Sticky Notes in one Tab gets visible in the Sticky Notes of some other blog of yours in another Tab.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. We will be using Mozilla Firefox 2 or IE 7.
2. Open all of your blogs in different tabs.
3. Enter the Data in the fields of Sticky Note in one of the blog under tab 1.
4. Open tab 2 and click on Shout button of the Sticky Note.

Actual Result:
The data entered under one tab in Sticky Notes is getting visible in Sticky Notes under another tab!

Regards,
Akhilesh.

I felt lot better after I finished reading his email completely! Reason? I knew this could not be a bug with the components of my blogs. Though I had not tested this before, I could tell this because, I had faced similar situations before. My past experiences (Testing Oracles!) were suggesting this to be due to some problem with tabbed browsing. But how could I come to any conclusion without proper evidence?

So at first I retested the issue submitted by Akhilesh. And as I was expecting, his observations were correct and I could reproduce the bug. Now the question was to prove that this was a problem with tabbed browsing and not with my blog. My tester’s intuition was telling me that this might be happening due to wrong handling of session variables in different tabs of a single browser window.

Hence I planned to test this using my own Gmail Id. For your information, I use my Gmail Id credentials for a variety of related Google services like Orkut, Blogger etc. And here are my observations.

Prerequisites:
You must be using your Gmail account as your Orkut account.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open IE7/Mozilla Firefox 2.
2. Open 2 new tabs under the same browser window.
3. In 1 tab logon to your Gmail account.
4. In another logon to your Orkut account.
5. Now logout of any of these accounts (lets say Gmail account).
6. Try to continue working in the other tab (in this case Orkut account).

Actual Result:
You will find the Orkut account has automatically been logged out!!!

My Conclusion:
I observed this problem (could be a feature too!) to be associated with tabbed browsing. This can happen with any browser with tabbed browsing (like IE7, Mozilla Firefox 2 etc.) facility.

Actually, it seems as if, the input entered in all the tabs are handled as single data (improper session variable handling!). In this case, this happened because; my Gmail and Orkut accounts are same. And logging out in one tab is being considered as logging out from all tabs where the same account information is being used.

Now I logged on to my Gmail and Orkut accounts in different browser windows (instead of same browser window with different tabs). Then logging out in one window did not automatically log out the other window. Even I could reproduce this bug while testing with my Blogger account (as NEW Blogger uses your Gmail account as login criteria).

A little observation has led to my above conclusion. My conclusion can be wrong too. But circumstantial evidences do suggest that this must be the reason for such unexpected behaviour. And I think same reason also applies to Akhilesh’s observation in case of Sticky Notes in my blogs.

Have any of you observed such behaviours in case of tabbed browsing? Do share your experiences too. And also let me know if you think my above conclusion is wrong (by leaving behind a Comment).

Happy Testing …

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Tags: Article, Bug in Microsoft, Bugs, Lessons Learned, Quality, Software Testing, Tutorial

An Invisible Bug that Bugged a Tester for 17 days!

What could be the biggest impact of a bug on someone’s life? Ask me. And my answer would be dark circles under your eyes! Yes, dark circles. I have spent many sleepless nights due to a bug during past 17 days!

And this bug was not a member of the family of bugs, which I usually catch daily while testing the Products in my office. Rather, this was a bug in my own blog on Software Testing! Yes your guess is right. The bug was present in your very own “Software Testing Zone”! How many of you had noticed it? Any way, I must admit that, I was informed about this bug by few of my blog readers though (Thanks Purna Chandra Gudipati, Shaifali). But before them, this bug was caught and reported by another tester and that’s me. :)

Now coming to the bug, it was a scripting error (Java Script Error), which was coming with each Page Load. For your information, I was using IE7, and the bug was equally reproducible in Fire Fox too. The Error said “Object Expected” in Line No: xxxx and Char No: 2. The Line No was different for different pages of my blog. But the Char No always pointed out the 2nd character. There were two interesting things about this bug. They are:

1. The Script Error was disappearing on its own after few minutes of the Page Load! And ‘Done’ was taking place of the Script Error in the status bar (left bottom corner of the browser window).

2. The line number, which was displayed in the Error Message, was beyond the total number of lines that I have in my template! For an example, the Error message on the home page always said that the error was in Line No: 1445, while actually I have only 1118 lines of codes in my template! Isn’t that interesting? So the error was supposed to be present on a virtual line of code, which was at least invisible to me.

These are the two main reasons why, I preferred to call it an “Invisible Bug” in the title of this post. Any way, bug is always a bug. Be it invisible or whatever. According to James Bach, “A bug is something that bugs somebody”. And this bug was definitely bugging me and my readers. Moreover, thinking of a bug in the blog of a tester was sufficient to drive me nuts. I was desperate to get rid of this little cramp. But I had my own problems too. I could have reverted back to the basic template easily, thus getting rid of the bug. But that was easier said than done. If you will take a closer look at my current template, then you will probably understand my problem. I have done so much modifications (enhancements!) in the basic template that, now it would have cost me dearly (in terms of time spent, if not money) if I had to change the template.

So I was left with no other choice than to hunt down this little smarty. And this was going to be the most difficult part. As for the first time in my testing career I was to fix the bug myself after finding it out. And to be honest, I loved doing it. To start with, I looked for my template backups. But the latest one, which I could find was more than 1 month old! Now I have learned an important lesson to take regular backups for my blog template. If I had a recent backup, I could have reverted back without much pain. So I had only one choice of scanning the whole HTML source code to find out the error. Let me tell you, this can be really tiresome. Soon after starting this, I realized that this was not going to help me in a big way. So I stopped doing it and started looking for better possible approaches. You can adopt this method while testing software too. If you are not able to find any bugs in a particular approach, shift gears. Change approaches. Who knows you might get success in the new approach! This little testing experience helped me here while hunting this bug. So I started scanning newly added features (based on Java Script) one at a time and looked for possible problematic areas. Thanks to Bizwhiz and Gokulanand Narayanan for guiding me in this direction. And suddenly, I can’t believe my eyes. I don’t see any script error while loading my homepage. Is this true or a mirage? Few more tests and yes I have done it. There is no more java script error on my blog. Actually, it was a problematic java script code in ZoomClouds code snippet. I removed the snippet and “No More Object Expected”! Hurray.

I can’t explain my feeling. The feeling of getting freedom from an annoying bug, which was continuously hurting my tester’s ego. The feeling of great satisfaction. The feeling of finally achieving something after a long hard work. And the feeling of victory of a tester over yet another bug!

Now, you won’t have to bear with the annoying java script error, every time you surf through the pages of my blog. Now I can sleep peacefully during nights. At least, I am glad that I could fix the error on my blog much faster (well, 17 days) than Google! Three months back (on Jan 12), I had found a Java Script Error in Google Suggest and written a blog post about it. Also I had informed Google about it. Although I received a confirmation from them within a day of reporting the bug, still the bug is there in Google Suggest! In that point of view, I think I have fixed the script error in my blog much faster than Google. I hope someone from Google is also reading this post. :)

Did anyone of you face similar situations, when a bug bugged your tester's ego? If so, please do share your experience by leaving behind your comment.

Happy Testing …

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Tags: Article, Bug in Google, Bugs, Lessons Learned, News, Quality, Software Testing, Tutorial

Busting 5 Software Testing Myths/Misconceptions!

Software Testing is a field, full of false beliefs, myths and misconceptions. You can find many misconceptions about software testing and tester as a whole. These misconceptions are predominant even among testers too. But situation becomes more dangerous when other stakeholders like the management and the client also get infected by these misconceptions. That can land a tester in serious trouble. I have come across many such misconceptions in my career and will try to list out few of them:

1. Testers are ‘negative thinkers’ and they ‘complain’ a lot – I don’t know whether testers are negative or positive thinkers, but they are no doubt some of the best thinkers. If you run out of ideas at any point, try to consult a tester. Chances are more, that you will get some wonderful ideas from him. And about complaining a lot, testers don’t complain. Rather they introduce you to the reality! They offer evidence and show how things in the software don’t work!

2. Testers like to break software – Testers don’t find any pleasure to break things. Rather the software is already broken and the tester only finds it out. Testers don’t like breaking software, rather they like in dispersing illusions that the software works properly. Testers try to free the stakeholders of the project from false beliefs. Testers are the people who introduce you to the realities.

3. Testers act as guardian of Quality – Testers are not quality police. Quality is something which is built into software. Since, testers don’t build software, how can they assure quality of the software? Testers can only provide quality related information to the management. Testers are service providers not quality guardians. Moreover, Quality can not be assured by testing. As Cem Kaner says, “Whatever is QA – that is not testing”. So concentrate on the job which you are best doing at, i.e. testing. Leave the job of Quality Assurance to your management.

4. Exhaustive testing can make software Bug Free – Let me tell you, there is no such thing like exhaustive testing! Simply because, the definition of exhaustive can vary from context to context. Any way, nobody can make a software bug free; even if he tests it for his entire life! Not even God. A tester’s job is to show the possible ways in which the software doesn’t work. But there is no such way to guarantee bug free software. Or to tell that the software has been 'completely' tested!

Think of Microsoft, where the tester developer ratio is 1:1. Still we see Microsoft Products being shipped with numerous bugs, security holes, vulnerability issues etc. Think of NASA, where the tester developer ratio is a whooping 5:1. Still disasters like Columbia could happen. Testers can find bugs in the software, but can’t make it 100% bug free. This is the truth and we have to live with it.

5. Testers and developers should not be friends – This is the most dangerous misconception, prominent in software industry. Even, I have seen management encouraging such attitudes among the employees. But this may do more harm than good and result in a dangerous situation. Rather, testers can get some valuable project related information from their developers. If they are friendly, then they can approach for some wonderful test ideas from the developers. Even the testers can get some important clues that can help them in designing powerful test cases. Remember, bugs are introduced by the developers. So they are the best person to know the possible ways to find them. Got any clue! :)

Try to make yourself and your stakeholders free from these misconceptions.

Happy Testing …

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Tags: Article, Bugs, Lessons Learned, Paradox, Quality, Software Testing, Tutorial

Best Certification in Software Testing. Wanna get one?

These days certifications are in great demand! And if you are in Software Testing, then it is assumed that you already have one of them or at least you are planning/preparing to have one of them soon. I find many people working in Software Testing field with some or other certification. How often do you hear about certifications in software testing like CSTE, CSQA, QAI, ISTQB, ISEB, Brainbench etc in your work place? I have seen a strange look on many faces when they are told that I don’t own (I purposefully used this word to emphasize the fact that certifications are now considered as commodities which can/should be owned!) a certification yet.

Interestingly, when I tell many of my blog readers and online friends that I don’t have any kind of certifications, they simply refuse to believe it! As if, I am a weird creature in this testing field, who does not have one of the most essential thing required to test a software or even write a blog about it! People suddenly start to doubt my credibility as a tester after hearing this fact. But who cares! Rather, this further strengthens my determination to avoid a commercial certification in testing. Don’t start to think that I am afraid of appearing a certification examination. But I don’t believe that any of the available certification programs is capable of making my testing skills better in any possible way. And I think all these so called certification programs are mere money making tools for their respective organizations.

During a discussion with a friend (who happens to be the fastest emerging skilled tester of India), I was told that he knows a friend who holds all available Software Testing Certifications along with 67 Brainbench Testing Certifications! And ironically, the poor chap wants to get more certifications so that he can make a Guinness Record! People believe that they can attain greater heights in their career by holding a certification! And the irony of Indian Software Testing Industry is that to some extent they are true! Here you can find many reputed (!) Software Companies who look for candidates holding some sort of certification while recruiting. I think that is the main reason driving these people to go after certifications.

But my question is: “Can any of these certifications guarantee that it can improve your skills as a tester?” Most of the syllabi of those certifications are age old. They have not been updated for quite long time. They speak of practices and approaches in Software Testing, which are outdated in current scenario. Most of those approaches were written in the earlier days of Software Testing. At a time, when Software Testing was struggling to get its own identity. There were very few people who were real experts in the field. But these certification courses are still happy to follow those old grandpa day’s procedures and approaches. In what way, are they supposed to better your testing skills?

By the way, most of those certifications are 3 hours examinations consisting of some theoretical questions (I am not telling this out of my imagination. I have lot of such old question papers with me). You need not use the thinking and reasoning parts of testing, to answer these questions, which are the most essential elements of a skilled tester. More over, the questions seldom deal with other required skills like risk management, building test ideas, exploring a software and so on. Anybody (can be from a different field other than testing) with a little ability of memorizing things, can clear such a certification examination with flying colors! What’s the big deal? By saying so, in no way I am questioning the ability of the people holding such certifications. My aim is to point out the inefficiency of such certification programs in improving the skills of a tester. 

When James Bach was asked by Michael Hunter of Microsoft in a recent interview about the “The biggest challenge for testers/the test discipline for the next five years”, one of his answers was “To reject the false prophets of certification. Bad certification programs cheapen our craft.” Think over it.

Now you must be wondering about the title of this post! So let me come to the point. If there is any certification, capable of improving your testing skills, then let me share this little secret with you. Try to be “Self-Certified”. If you are really skilled, then why should you need a piece of paper to certify your skills? I know a few testers who are Self Certified Skilled Testers. 

And James Bach is one among them. You might be shocked to know that his highest formal qualification is 8th Grade from High school (James please correct me if I am wrong). But still, he is considered as one of the fathers of software testing. He is one of the pioneers, who has helped Software Testing get its own identity. To reach this position, he never required any commercial certification. So why should we? Let me tell you, I am one of those upcoming Self Certified Skilled Testers. These are the 3 golden rules, that I have set for me to become one of them.

1. Keep learning. There is no substitute for learning. There are lots of things which can help you in becoming a better tester. Even subjects like philosophy and epistemology can make you a better tester. Because according to James, “testing is applied epistemology”.
2. Keep practicing. Practice makes you perfect. And that applies to software testing too. The more testing you do, the smarter you become as a tester. So test, test and test!
3. Try to acquire the different skills required for a skilled tester. And I am told that, there are more than 3000 documented skills a tester can/should have. Please don’t start asking me for a list of them. Because, honestly I don’t have such a list. I am trying to explore, find and learn those skills. So also you can.

If you have any other suggestions that can be added to my golden rule list, please feel free to let me know (of course, by leaving a Comment). And if that sounds credible, I promise to add them in my list with proper credit to you. And last but not the least, Wish me luck in becoming a Self Certified Skilled Tester from INDIA.

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Tags: Article, FAQs, Lessons Learned, News, Paradox, Software Testing, Tutorial