11.30.06
Posted in Books, Ruby at 3:55 pm by Željko Filipin
I am reviewer for Brian Marick’s book Scripting for Testers. I wondered if it got cancelled, because the last post at reviewers mailing list was in July. Today I have red at Brian’s blog that
Scripting for Testers has been renamed Everyday Scripting in Ruby
and
Sadly, the scheduled ship date is a bit after Christmas. Since it would be sad if testers didn’t get the book under their tree, we’ve decided to delay the holiday.
I wonder how is he going to do that?
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11.29.06
Posted in Bugs at 2:49 pm by Željko Filipin
I was very surprised today when I saw this advertisement in Windows Live Messenger 8 this morning. This looks to me like Arabic alphabet, but since I can not read it, I really can not be sure. I wonder why Messenger thinks I can read Arabic? Maybe my Croatian preferences confused it?
In any case, this looks like a bug to me. Why?
Commercial is there because somebody wants me to buy something from them. Right? But it should be written in language that I understand, otherwise I would miss it. Even if commercial is written in language I can read, it should be written in alphabet I could read. Commercial written in any other alphabet, even in language I understand, would miss me.
Maybe this advertisement is intentionally strange to intrigue me. If that is the case, it succeeded. I clicked that commercial and it leads to http://get.live.com/messenger/features.
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11.28.06
Posted in Software at 11:17 am by Željko Filipin
I just love Gmail labels. I have lots of them, over two hundred. Every person has a label. I also have several special labels, like personal and work. I use them to label mail that I have read but can not respond at the moment. I use those special labels a lot. Labels are sorted alphabetically, so those labels are at the bottom (personal, work). I use a simple trick to move them to the top of the list. I add dot to the beginning of label. Now personal is .personal, and work is .work. You could use another character, but I like dot. It is small and useful.
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11.24.06
Posted in Bugs at 1:33 pm by Željko Filipin
Brent Strange wrote (almost a month ago) that he noticed a bug in Windows Media Player 10. I also use it for listening to internet radio, so I tried to reproduce it (I have Windows Media Player 10 and 11). Successfully. Then I noticed another bug and left a comment at his post, but I like this bugs so much that I had to write a post about it.
Should internet radio behave like ordinary radio? In general. You should be able to change stations, adjust volume. Well, that is about it (do turn on and off count as features?).
You could also add some useful features.
Say, pause a song. Phone rings while your favourite song plays? Pause, take your call and resume playing when you are finished with the call. Very useful.
Then, forward a song. You have heard that song ten times today (I listen a lot of radio), or you just do not like it? Press forward button and enjoy the next song.
But there is behaviour that I (nor Brent) would not call a feature.
(I guess) Brent noticed that stop button is not disabled. As a good tester he tried it while listening to a song, and noticed that after you press play button, the song does not resume playing from the point where you stopped, but from the beginning. That means you can play your favourite song over and over? Yes! Do not report this bug to Microsoft. 
I do not know how I noticed my bug, but I guess it was by accident. I must have pressed mute button instead of pause (or stop) button when I wanted some silence and was surprised when after a while radio started playing without me turning mute off. So I investigated a bit, and found out that mute turns off at the end of the song.
A bug, I would say. If I clicked mute, I meant mute, not mute until the end of this song.
But this bug has interesting side effect. Click mute during commercial. Continue what you were doing. Volume is back to normal after commercial ends. I will quote myself: “Do not report this bug to Microsoft. :)”.
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11.16.06
Posted in Testing at 12:56 pm by Željko Filipin
Yesterday I blogged how TortoiseSVN 1.4.1 Crashes. I could not just click “Send” button at error report window because I have recently reinstalled windows and I did not have default e-mail client configured (I use Gmail only). As a tester, I know a value of error report, so I wanted to send it. Also, I really like TortoiseSVN so I wanted to contribute. Configuring Outlook Express to use Gmail servers took some time, but fortunately I have done it already, so I knew where to find documentation.
I usually send error reports (especially when all I have to do is click a button), but there is usually no response. The exception is Arachno Ruby IDE, but that is another story.
This morning, I was really (pleasantly) surprised when I found this in my inbox (posted with permission):
It’s a bug in Subversion when using the neon 0.26.2 library. I’m currently working with the Subversion guys on a fix for this. In the meantime, either deactivate SSPI authentication on the server or downgrade to TSVN 1.4.0. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Stefan
--
___ “De Chelonian Mobile”
oo // \\ TortoiseSVN
(_,\/ \_/ \ The coolest Interface to
\ \_/_\_/> (Sub)Version Control
/_/ \_\ http://tortoisesvn.net
Please notice the turtle in the signature, I really worked hard to reproduce it as in original, but with limited succes (I used SimpleCode).
Not only did I get the response, but there was also two workarounds for my problem. I do not have access to servers, and I have already downgraded to 1.4.0, but it was nice of him to let me know. Actually, after he gave me permission to post his response, he (once more) apologized for not having a fix “because we lack a test environment with a windows domain”. 1.4.0 works fine for me, I upgraded by mistake (that is also another story), so as far as I am concerned, they can take their time. Also, I will surely send them all error reports from now on.
If you treat your users with respect, they will help you make better software.
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11.15.06
Posted in Bugs, Hrvatski (Croatian) at 5:59 pm by Željko Filipin
Upravo sam instalirao TortoiseSVN 1.4.1 i stalno se ruši. Update, commit, bilo što. Kad sam vratio na 1.4.0 sve radi kako treba.
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Posted in Bugs at 5:59 pm by Željko Filipin
I have just installed TortoiseSVN 1.4.1 and it crashed all the time. Update, commit, anything. When I reverted to 1.4.0 everything works fine.
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11.10.06
Posted in Watir at 1:18 pm by Željko Filipin
You have a bunch of tests, right? With every build of your application under test, you run them all. If a test fails, application should be fixed, or you test should be fixed. Wouldn’t it be nice to make how-to documents from that tests?
Time for an example (Ruby, Watir):
You run that test, and you get output like this (this is real output from my test):
log in
- go to ‘[application url]/login.aspx’
- (url should be ‘[application url]/login.aspx’)
- (there should be text ‘Please Login’)
- at text field ‘userName’ enter ‘[userName]‘
- at text field ‘password’ enter ‘[password]‘
- click button ‘Login’
- (url should be ‘[application url]/default.aspx’)
- (there should be text ‘Recent Contributions’)
- (there should be text ‘logged in as [first name] [last name]‘)
I posted this at wtr-general list and people recommended to take a look at rSpec and Systir.
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