Code Slush

Code Slush, sometimes called Code Chill, is when you take a snapshot of the code in the Main/Master branch and test the stability of the release. It occurs usually before code freeze so QA to get a quick assessment of the release.

Difference between Code Freeze and Code Slush

Code Freeze occurs when no new code can be committed to the current release cycle. This is the code that is ready for Production.

Code Slush is just a snapshot of the release - developers could still commit code to the release branch. However, Developers should use caution when adding code as the code base as there may have been a lot of code changes for QA to validate.

When to Do Code Slush

In the past, we have done Code Slush when we skip a release week - usually because of a holiday or at the end of the quarter. QA will test the stability of the release branch at a certain point of time - usually by running automation or simple Acceptance Testing.

Code Slush is also done when a couple of major changes are added to the release that requires full regression - such as a third party API update. QA may need add

There have been times where a Code Slush would be implemented right after a long weekend - just to see how things are.

Five Things I Learned

It's good to announce that a Code Slush is going to occur. Developers that might have been waiting to commit code may do so before Code Slush.

It's good to have a specific set of Acceptance Tests for Code Slush. The test should be quick. A code slush is performed to make sure a specific component is working before a code freeze.

Code Slush worked great between long release cycles. It gives QA a heads up on how stable the release is before the code freeze. Useful if you do midnight code freeze and there's no developer around.

We have done several schedule Code Slush when Google released a new API. This allowed QA some extra time to do some testing - especially if you have to wait 24 hours to see specific results.

Sometimes when a developer makes a very risky change, they will request a Code Slush immediately after merging the code in - just to make sure that the changes aren't producing some unexpected changes.

Country Flag Icons

This week’s QA post features flag stamps for Snagit. There are 12 countries featured in this collection:

Download the Flag Images

These countries were selected based on the popularity of using - especially for e-commerce testing.

Why Would You Need Flag Stamps?

If you’re doing any type of international testing, you may want to highlight the locale of certain screenshots - especially if you are doing a side-by-side comparison.

This is just something nice to have when you need it.

Image Size

There are two image size sets - one width is 250 and the other is 500. The thought is that there are times when you may need a big stamp and times when you would want a smaller stamp.

Just import what you think you would use. Obviously, you can always downsample the image - but why do that every time you use it?

Snagit Limitations

Snagit doesn’t take the file name as part of the search term. I thought by having the name and width in the name, it would appear as part of the search term.

This means that you will have to add the search term if you want to search for these flags at a later date.

Snagit QA Templates 2.0

Last week, I introduced some Snagit Stamps that would be useful for QA.

This week is another useful collection of stamps for QA:

Download Zip File

Collection Contains

• Warning - Useful to highlight some warning issue.
• Red Light - Draw attention to some issue on the page.
• Red White X - I find the standard "X" to be boring.
• Red X - Just a different 'X' to use when there's a lot of issues on the page.
• Pin Mark - Use to point out little things on a page.
• Markers - Adds a little flare to those highlighted texts. There's Red, Green and Yellow for some variety.

Sample

Next Week Post?

Next week the QA blog post will be focused on International QA stamps for Snagit.

QA Snagit Stamps

Stamps in Snagit are a great way to touch up images. There's all sorts of creative ways to draw attention to your screenshot.

Recently, I created some stamps to help pinpoint where a screenshot was taken. This is useful when I am doing a side-by-side comparison.

Sample Screenshot

Download

Download the Snagit QA Templates

I am making my QA stamps available for anyone to use. Some notes:

• There are six images in 2 Categories - Production and QA.
• Each category has Blue, Green and Red. (Useful when you want to highlight a Good, Bad, or Info image)
• Image Dimensions are 510 x 413 and resizable in Snagit.
• Images are transparent PNG - they should look good when placed on your screenshot.

Snagit Features

Snagit is a “must have” tool for any QA developer. It provides a way to capture the screen and advance annotation tools.

Too Expensive?

While some people may be turned away from the price - after all Apple provides a screen capture tool for free. Snagit is more than just a screen capture tool, it provides a way for users to better communicate a message.

For QA engineers, the better the communication the quicker an issue can be fixed.

Here are four tools that I use all the time in Snagit.

Hacking Wordle with some Snagit stamps

Stamp Tool - Some people may think this is a clip art library. I disagree, there are so many useful stamps here - including mouse pointer, green checkmark, red x, and many more. These are available as part of the default install. Please rest easy you won’t need to spend a single penny to get useful stamps.

The great thing is that you can add your own. Some that I have added include country flags, Facebook’s thumbs-up, and logos for some JavaScript libraries for testing.

Whitehouse website with a cut tear

Cut Out Tool - Easily remove the centerpiece of a screenshot that is not relevant to the issue. This is a great way to show the header/footer of a page to highlight discrepancies. The Cut Out Tool has horizontal and vertical cuts as well as tear effects. Yes this could easily be done in other graphic tools, but why open another app, when Snagit has the ability to do it for you?

Showing some step tool in an old Macintosh program

Step Tool - Use this tool to highlight features in a screenshot. Maybe you are testing new navigation and you want to show the five features that were fixed. The Step Tool auto increase each time you click on it, and you can always change the numerical value after applying it.

Using Spotlight and the Simplify tool. Can you guess the site?

Spotlight Tool - Draw attention to a particular part of an image. The nice thing is that you can have multiple Spotlights - using different shapes. This makes it easy to point out something in an image without having to use a bunch of arrows.

Three Features That I Would Like to See Implemented

Ability to combine screenshots - Sometimes I like to overlay one screenshot over another and remove sections. I’ll do this when I want to show different tooltips on the same page. This would be simple as selecting images in the recent bar and having a combined image functionality.

Crop Overlay Images - It would be nice to have the ability to crop an image that is over another image. Right now when you apply the crop tool it impacts the whole image. The same goes for the Eraser tool.

Webp Support - Google introduced Webp in 2018 and is supported by all the major browsers. The compression helps reduce file sizes - which in the long run will help reduce the need to buy additional storage.

National Margarita Day

Happy National Margarita Day!

That got me thinking if I was a bartender and I had to create a Margarita drink for QA, what would it be?

• Hot and Spicy?
• Green and Red?
• Extra Strong for those test days?
• Mostly water - playing it safe?

My selection would be a Green Margarita made with Super Green Juice. That's basically a mix of Apples, Lemons, Romaine, and Cucumber.

Typical Margarita Ingredients

• 1 lime wedge, plus 2 lime wheels for garnish
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt, for glass rims
• 4 ounces (120ml) high-quality blanco tequila
• 2 ounces (60ml) Cointreau
• 1 1/2 ounces (45ml) fresh juice from 2 limes

Directions

• Run lime wedge around the outer rims of 2 rocks glasses and dip rims in salt. Set aside.
• In a cocktail shaker, combine tequila, Cointreau, and lime juice. Fill with ice and shake until thoroughly chilled, about 15 seconds (the bottom of a metal shaker should frost over).
• Fill glasses with fresh ice and strain margarita into both glasses. Garnish with lime wheels and serve.

Super Green Juice

In a juicer, mix up a combination of order, the lemons, apple, romaine, cucumber, and greens,

Special equipment

Cocktail shaker, cocktail strainer

Get the Full Recipe

The Food Network has the full recipe.

Drink Responsibly. While Drinking and Software Testing isn't illegal in the United States - don't give your state reps any ideas.

QA Info Bar Bookmarklet

When testing a webpage, sometimes I want to add additional information before taking a screenshot. While I can always use Snagit to add text post screen capture, there can be a better way to do this in the browser.

In a recent test, I wanted to add the Domain and screen size to the screenshot - for general reference. I thought it would be good to use a Bookmarklet to get this accomplished.

Kasper Mikiewicz wrote a cool Bookmarklet to "Debug window width & height" on Coderwall. This bookmarklet adds a window reference to the bottom right corner. I decided to modify it and add the domain name of the page:

Drag Code to Your Bookmark Bar

Select this text and drag it to your bookmark bar:

Demo This Bookmarklet - You can also "drag and drop" that link to your bookmark bar.

When you click on the link in the Bookmark Bar you'll see a new box on the bottom right of the webpage.

This is really useful when you are testing responsive design because the height/width will change as you resize the browser.

I added the Z-Index so the "QA Info bar" appears on top of any other object.

More Bookmarklets

Some more bookmarklets that I shared in the past:

Check out the Browser Badge Bookmarklet. - Add a logo to your page to show you tested in Chrome.

Create Dynamic Bookmarklets - make Jira searches practical.

Quick Editor - Create a blank page for a quick note.

Blue Green Deployment

The Blue/Green deployment is when release engineering stages up a new instance of a production environment and they slowly move traffic to the new instance. Once the traffic is 100% on the new environment the old one gets taken down.

This is usually done to implement a zero-downtime deployment. Configurations to get this done is usually done using a Loadbalancer.

Some QA Notes About This

Production Only Many organizations will not put a Blue/Green deployment in the staging environment - usually because of cost and other logistics. This adds some risk to the release as QA isn't able to test the changeover.

Real World Example

Downtime may still be needed. There has been times when we had to do a major database upgrade and the Blue/Green deployment makes the process more complex than it needs to be. In those times, we alerted customers of the downtime - usually off hours and put together a plan to minimize the downtime.

Real World Example

Patching Still Possible! You can still implement code patches in the Blue/Green model. The developer needs to commit the code change to "master/main" so that it gets implemented in the next release. We found that JavaScript changes were harder to patch than "basic" code changes.

Real World Example

Safe Production Testing There might be times when you need to test certain features in the Production environment. Using the Blue/Green Deployment the Infrastructure team can load up an instance but not make it public. QA can go through a specific URL to test before the stack is live.

Real World Example

QA January Memes

In honor of Burn's Night, here are some QA Memes in poetry form.

Poems

Gregory Boyle's advice, "If you can't fix it, feature it."

John Deere has a saying - Quality is Cost and Cost is Quality

I created this using a poem generator.

The Buggy And Risky Code

A Poem by qa

BostonGhost.com Email

A long time ago, I purchased the BostonGhost.com domain to use for testing. I never did anything with it, but still have the domain thanks to a hosting provider that I worked at.

Every once in a while I would get business inquiries about the domain. Usually, it's a sign of mass mailing, and the sender doesn't pay much attention to the potential client.

This is one such email that I recently got:

QA Fails the Email

Here's are four reasons that QA fails this email:

1. Why would I trust an email coming from gmail.com? Do they not have a legitimate business? Shouldn't the sender be using their domain name? If you are so good, wouldn't you have a domain name-
2. Nice generic hello statement. You couldn't capitalize the domain name-
3. "Hope Your Doing Well?" Like you really care how I am doing?
4. Nice that you keep the variable placeholder in the email. That clearly shows that you pay attention to your emails. I certainly want to trust my Social Media Optimization and SEO to your company.

We All make Mistakes

I didn't call out the name of this company. We all make mistakes.

You should always test your email campaign before sending it out. At least have a second set of eyes to offer some constructive feedback.

Want to know why your conversion rate is low? You're not testing.