Thursday, July 21, 2005

Do a "Windows + M" when outlook is active window .....

I have noticed this behavior (seems like a bug) with Outlook 2003

When outlook main window is active, press Windows key + M (minimize all). Instead of outlook window getting minimized, it looses the focus and hence does not get minimized. This does not happen with any other office 2003 applications. I am using Windows XP. BTW, if I use right click on Taskbar ->Select Show the Desktop, outlook window gets minimized correctly. It seems that piece of code that handles active outlook for “Show the Desktop” function is not present for “windows button + M function when outlook is active window. A severiy 3 or 4 type of bug?

Any body observed this?

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Blink Testing and power of Human brain ...

James Bach has posted this excellent post on what he calls as “Blink Test” - which is about exploiting human brain's power to process huge data in seconds and find out patterns (good or bad). Software testing is more about thinking and questioning. One who is curious and one tries to go beyond the obvious will become a successful tester. As human beings we are greatly blessed with power of thinking and our brain is capable of storing and processing data at “super sonic speed” and give amazing results.

In the post, James presents a movie that demonstrates with a sample application how one can perform blink test by exploiting the power of our brain. In the post he gives few examples of using this kind of testing (or investigation) like paging through a long file super rapidly. On the face of it, it looks that one is processing a huge data in a small interval of time – may sound futile. But believe me, as James demonstrates in the example, it really works. Can you imagine running about 700 odd tests (need to watch the movie how this was made possible) in about 5-8 secs time and find bugs? Efficient and quick testing right?

Great post James.