FireFox's Command Line Arguments

 

Summary

Mozilla FireFox can be executed from a DOS command line in Microsoft WindowsXP. Along with being able to launch the application, users can also provide arguments to FireFox, allowing them to alter details or provide directions to the browser as it starts. However, when combining the command line arguments, occasionally an argument is ignored.

Application Description

Mozilla's FireFox is an Internet browser available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. At the time of writing this presentation, FireFox was still pre-1.0 (meaning that it was still a preview release for testing purposes).

Test Design

This example demonstrates the use of Combination testing. In Combination testing, we test two or more variables at the same time. We do this type of testing both to observe variables in conjunction (so as to verify their interoperatibility) and to increase the productivity of our testing. For example, by testing three different variables together, we can verify whether any one variable has a damaging effect on the others and we can also verify that all three variables work correctly.

FireFox Internet browser features a variety of command line arguments, including allowing a user to launch FireFox to a specific page, open with a specific window size, or start the profile manager after launching. In this presentation, we want to look at combination testing these arguments. Command line arguments are supposed to be able to be chained together (or, in other words, an application should accept many command line arguments). Since this is the case, rather than test all of the arguments individually, we can test them by combining a few so as to test more efficiently. Each argument should be looked at, or parsed, separately, so combining the arguments should not have any effect on how they are read.

We expect that FireFox will be able to correctly parse through the command line arguments and perform the requested operations appropriately.

Performing the Test

  1. Open a DOS prompt by clicking on Start->Run and typing "cmd" at the prompt:

  2. Click the 'OK' button to open the Command Prompt window:

  3. Navigate to the FireFox directory (the default is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\):

  4. To run FireFox from the command line, simply type in firefox.
  5. Command line arguments are typically added with a dash. For example, to start FireFox with the profile manager, you would type in firefox -profilemanager. To launch FireFox to a specific URL, you simply type in the URL. For example, you would type firefox http://www.google.com.
  6. Let's launch FireFox to the profile manager in http://www.google.com. To do so, type in firefox -profilemanager http://www.google.com. In step 5, we did each of the command line operations separately simply to demonstrate their functionality. This way, we are combining two tests into one:

Results/Relevance

Unfortunately, FireFox does not launch from the command prompt correctly when more than one argument is specified. Instead, Firefox opens, but not to the address specified. And on the newer releases of FireFox, many of the other command line arguments will not work, either. FireFox recognizes the arguments (as there are no error messages), but it fails to initiate the correct events. The editor, java console, help text, and profile manager will all fail to launch from the command line. This is especially true with this test. If a URL is specified in the command line when launching FireFox, the browser will launch and open the stated URL. However, in combination with any of the other recognized command line arguments, for some reason the URL is ignored (with no errors thrown) and the browser starts normally.

This is not a critical bug, but for many users who set up scripts and automate much of their standard computer tasks, the inability to launch FireFox correctly from the command line with arguments may be enough motivation to use a different browser until the problem is fixed.

Similar Tests/Additional Notes

More information about the bug in this presentation can be found in Mozilla's Bugzilla database.

During this time before FireFox is officially released, it is a Software Testing student's dream-come-true. Explore this pre-release software from many different testing angles and take advantage of this excellent showcase of beta software while it is available.

Configuration Notes

Testing Mozilla's FireFox v0.9.1 on:

Created 03 August 2004 for the CSTER

All images and written material ©Copyright Sam Oswald 2004

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