Winnemucca, Nevada

Recently I was doing some location testing using Google. The purpose of the test was to find a place in the United States where I could expand the radius targeting more than 50-miles.

When you use Google targeting you are allowed to expand that radius only when your location had a small population density.

If your range has a high population count Google will force you to have a smaller target.

I tried many remote areas of the United States and the only place that I could expand the target range to 100-miles was Winnemucca, Nevada.

I am sure that there are places in Alaska that would qualify - but I wanted to test for a place in the lower 48-states.

Hopefully this helps someone else doing targeting testing using Google Locations.

Code Freeze Meme

It's been a while since I added QA graphics to the QA library. Here are some more images to add to my collection.

This week's theme is "Code Freeze"

Quality Logo

Since today is Labor Day, I decided to go easy on today's post and highlight some QA logos that might be fun for presentations or Notion headline.

Typerwiter

Counter Dial

I wish I knew more about...

Today's blog post is all about the Ministry of Testing blog challenge for September.

Write a blog on the topic "I wish I knew more about..." before September 17th

My answer is simple:

I feel like there are a bunch of Chrome plugins that are out there that I should know about.

Sure I use some of the popular Chrome tools such as ColorZilla, JunkFill, Bug Magnet, Fake Filler, and Page Ruler Redux.

Now What?

The next time that I have downtime, I'll spend a few minutes searching the Google Play store for extensions that might be useful.

Some search queries that I can think of:

• Random Data insert
• HTML5 Checker
• Cookie tester
• JQuery test
• Screenshot - always looking for the latest screenshot tools.

Fuzz Testing

Fuzz testing (fuzzing) is a quality assurance technique used to discover coding errors and security loopholes in software, operating systems, or networks. It involves inputting massive amounts of random data, called fuzz, to the test subject in an attempt to make it crash.

This is usually a technique done with Automation to see how fields respond to random text and interactions.

Manual testers may want to use Bug Magnet, a popular Chrome Extenstion to add random data to fields. This is more exploratory testing than Fuzz Testing. Fuzz Testing is focused more on how the software reacts to a huge set of random data being entered.

Fuzzing is a critical part of testing as it checks for potential vulnerabilities with the software application and logic.

You can learn more about Fuzzing at the Open Web Application Security Project Foundation website.

Early Evaluation

In QA, it's good to not have any bad surprises. This is especially true around code freeze. Nobody wants to encounter blockers or critical issues that may impact the ability to release on time.

This is why many companies implement an Early Evaluation of releases. It's a chance to see where the release branch is, and if there are any issues.

Basic Definition of Early Evaluation

Main Purposes

There are three main components of the Early Evaluation:

Is the Release Branch really Stable - This is the time to find out build issues. Not at midnight or off-hours when code freeze happens. Key developers may not be near their computer to help out.

Are there any Database Migrator issues? Some developers may not check for migrator conflicts when merging their code in. Checking for migrators errors can help determine of certain functionality are working as expected.

Acceptance Testing - The QA team should have a suite of manual acceptance tests. (These are specific tests that QA has defined are critical for sign off) QA should be checking for any Blocking Issues This is also a good time to run automated acceptance tests. If there are any automation failures, QA should check to make sure its not related to release intended changes. Fixing these now will help with overnight automation runs.

Worth the Time and Effort

Code Freeze day can be crazy, but it's important to take a break and test out the release as part of the early evaluation. In the past, there has been a lot of good bugs found before code freeze, saving a lot of time during code freeze.

Google Lighthouse

Google's Lighthouseis a useful extension to test the performance of any website. It's useful to learn about the load times and suggest ways to improve the site.

This is built into every chrome browser, simply go to the Developer Tools page, Command - Option - I, and then click on the Lighthouse on the top menu bar.

Official Product Description

Useful for QA?

This is a useful tool to check for broken images that may go unnoticed during testing. Especially since the test is run on another server outside of VPN.

In addition, the "properly size" images can highlight any images that may cause slowness in load times - particularly important for mobile users.

Also useful for QA to test login processes. Since some portions of the site may require logins, you can use this tool to see how much of the site is exposed without logging in.

Easy to run, and just about instant results make it a quick tool to assist QA with some general page testing.

They are constantly adding new audit metrics using industry best practices.

Ask QA: Should You Always Report Bugs?

Someone recently asked me:

Answer: First of all, QA should not be looking for reasons to NOT create bug reports. QA should file tickets for every bug that they encounter. Then they should assign the right priority to that issue. It's up to Product/Dev to decide on how to triage the minor issue.

Tickets should be created for every issue. Here are some reasons why:

Sometimes they get fixed: In some instances, I have seen developers fix multiple issues in a common code base just because they have the file open and can make the modifications.

It's a test of a good QA Team - Engineers and Product will see that QA is active and finding things. It shows that QA is looking for issues and reporting them. If customers are reporting issues that QA isn't finding, well that could question how good the QA team is.

Bug Patterns - I have found that finding little bugs can lead to finding the bigger bugs. When developers are sloppy in some areas, it's a sign that they may be sloppy in another area. So when I find a minor issue. It makes me stop and think, is there another issue here that may not be so obvious.

Maybe the Feature isn't Ready, yet - If QA finds a lot of minor issues, it's might be something that the product team to sit back and take notice. Should a new feature/product really go to market with so many minor issues? If they aren't addressed now, when will they be?

Don't be Discouraged

Minor tickets can be frustrating to find and report - even if QA knows that no one will read the full bug. However, there may be a time when the bug will get fix, so it's important to report the issue.

Some Pointers

• Don't spend too much time writing up the minor tickets. Just do the bare minimum on reporting. If the Dev team needs clarification, you can always go back and add value to the report.
• Generate a report of the minor bugs. If you do daily or weekly QA reports, make sure to highlight the minor bugs found. This will help highlight the issues that QA has found. There's strength in numbers.
• Combine Issues - When you have some downtime, revisit some of the old minor issues and see if it makes sense to combine several minor issues into a single ticket - which may make the new ticket a higher priority.

Test Cases Specs

On January 25, 1988, Presiden Ronald Reagan gave the following quote at his last State of the Union address:

The idea behind this quote can be applied to Test Cases for regression. I often see that when initially creating the QA test engineer will overwhelm the test case with complex steps and validations. It's important to keep the test case as simple as possible.

Tips and Tricks

Each test should focus on one test result. (This will make it easier to downgrade tests.)

The test case should piggyback on a parent test. For example, the common path to the functionality being tested. This will make it easier to change future enhancements and make it easy to test that test against other paths that customers may take.

Keep the test as simple as possible. If there's complexity involve consider splitting the test up.

Test Cases should be easy enough that anyone new to the organization could be able to follow the steps. However, don't keep it too simple to miss out on the reason behind the test.

Just like developers have code review, QA should have their test cases reviewed by their peers.

Google Chrome URL Page

Google Chrome has a lot of useful built-in debugging tools. You can access many of these via single page URL Cheat Sheet:

Type this in the Browser URL field: chrome://chrome-urls/

How Does this Help QA?

There are some useful items here for QA. Here's a few that I encountered.

Chrome Flags - This is where you can see all the experiments available in the current browser. This is useful to check on every once in a while. You can find out what new tools are may get released soon and you can play with them.

Accessibility - This allows you to take a deep dive in Chromes Accessibility based on what's loaded up right now. You can find out more about Accessibility testing that's available in Chrome on the Accessibility Page.

User Action - This is useful when you want to see how Chrome responds to certain keyboard/mouse actions.

Inspect - You can setup the Port Forwarding. Useful when you need to debug an issue on a particular server. You don't have to change your system settings, simply enable it at the browser level.

Net-Export - If you need to do a data dump of web activity, this is the place to get it done. Simply enable the logging and perform the activity. A full dump of all the activity will be dump into a JSON file. This is useful when a developer may not be able to reproduce the error on their end, and they may find something in the logs to explain why.

Dino - Everyone's favorite Dino game is available whenever you want.

Fun to Explore

Take some time to check out all 85 links on the Chrome URLs page.

Again, to access the page type this URL in the Browser URL field: chrome://chrome-urls/