Session Based Testing 1

Hereon I plan to post the Test Notes of the “Session Based Testing” of various applications that I Test - which helps me to learn and develop Test Ideas which I can use as heuristics while testing other applications. Here is the first of the series.

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Product -: Wordsearch Creator V 0.9
Product Link -: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsc/
Environment -: Windows Vista Home Basic, 32 bit OS
Tester -: M.V. Manoj
Start Date/Time -: 17/03/09 , 00.00 am

Charter/Mission -: To find out as many problems as possible that could influence the stakeholders to consider fixing all the bugs I report in order to improve the quality of the product.

#1. I am testing this product for the first time and I found that upon clicking the Help Contents, I am directed to http://openforschools.co.uk/wordsearchcreator/doc/0.9 But since at present I don’t have Internet connection, I would have to do without Help and learn/test by exploring the application. But then why a desktop application would require/mandate a user to have internet connection?

#2. Because of lack of Internet connectivity, I am unable to search the Internet to see if I can get any info or reviews about Wordsearch Creator OR similar applications.

#3. I launched 150 instances of the application. In task manager I can see that upon opening multiple instances there is a large variation in the memory usage of Wordsearch creator and it varied from 804K to 7424K. This large variations of memory usage could be a potential problem. I can’t see a reason when the user might have to open so many instances simaltaneously, so why not restrict the number of instances to one at a time?

#4. The multiple instances did not have any numbering on them, so upon cascading I could not identify in which order the application instances were launched.

#5. Close all the 150 instances in one go -> Close Group. Application closed gracefully.

#6. The ‘Control Box’ -> Height and Width fields have a lower boundary of ‘1’ each and an upper boundary of ‘99’ when I used the scroll bars. When I provided the value ‘99’ to both height & width fields it made the squares to go out of bounds of the page. The squares should not go beyond bounds of the page, whatever a user does.

#7. I was able to save the Out of Bounds page Results as ‘.PDF’ and as ‘.wordsearch’

#8. Upon providing 276496 in the Word List and clicking on create , a message ‘Only 0 words placed’ message is shown (scrnshot aval).

#9. When I copied entire A-Z in one line - multiple times and clicked on create. A message box with “Creating Wordsearch” blocks the screen and doesn’t return the result until I stopped the search.

#10. Once the grid is created even if you modify your Word List, the New answers are not displayed. i.e. After create, modify word list does not work and you have to recreate the grid to include the new wordlist.

#11. (Menu) Wordsearch à ‘Set allowed directions’ seems to be working fine in all directions. I tried a few tests and it passed.

#12. Cntrl++ does not work for Zoom In.

#13. If the grid goes out of bound of the page, Wordsearch à ‘Maskdrawer’ has problems, it also goes out of bounds and ‘Done’ cannot be obtained.

#14. Menu Options, ‘File’ and ‘Format’ has been given the same Shortcut Key ‘F’. “Alt + F” opens ‘File’. So ‘Format’ doesn’t have shortcut key.

#15. Wordsearch -> ‘Copy as Image’ works fine and passed few tests I ran.

#16. WordSearch à ‘Word List Creator’ generates the same list as many times as we click on ‘Generate List’ button. When I clicked on OK, I found that this list gets appended to ‘Control Box’ à ‘Word List’ rather than overwriting the existing list.

#17. The dialogs that comes up upon clicking the Menu options doesn’t have proper naming conventions. Wordsearch à ‘Set Allowed Directions’ –Opens- ‘Set Word Directions’ dialog. Similarly, Wordsearch -> ‘Mask Drawer’ –Opens- ‘Word Search Creator’ dialog.

#18. ** *Test Ideas Used ***
- Try to open multiple instances of the application and look if multiple instances makes any sense?
- Open lots of instances and find the memory usage pattern of the application.
- Learn by the application behaviour, the inputs and output patterns
- Try to identify the boundaries of the grid/word list
- Menu Traversal to learn the functionalities provided. Open and look at the functionalities.
- Check if short cut keys are functioning properly.
- Check the word search application with different font and colors.
- Check the title of the dialog boxes in the application.
- Check the completed grid with only answers, only word list and with both.
- Check the various directions in which search can be done.
- Check the export and import functionalities.

---End Session -: 2:22 am-----