Bookmark Update Scheduling Accepts Any Input

 

Summary

Mozilla FireFox includes a feature that allows a user to have the program check the user's bookmarked pages for updates and inform the user when an update has occurred. When scheduling the update, however, if the user enters any value other than a positive integer, FireFox will still accept the input as valid data without any warning.

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 Domain testing. In Domain testing, we are evaluating a function's acceptance of input by choosing representative data to enter into the data fields.

In this presentation, we are looking at a scheduling function that allows any input to be typed into the options box. When asking for FireFox to let us know when one of our favorite pages is updated, we notice that we can enter the number of minutes manually. We want to verify that FireFox only accepts valid data and that it checks our data before storing it.

We expect that the program will inform us that our input is incorrect and explain to us what is valid input. We also expect that the program will not accept our invalid input.

Domain testing is a powerful technique in that it helps us evaluate one of the key areas of interaction between the user and the program: the input interface. This is a key area of any application and one that tends to have many fatal errors.

Performing the Test

  1. Open Mozilla FireFox and navigate the browser to the page http://www.google.com:

  2. Add a bookmark to the Google page by pressing Ctrl-D or by clicking on Bookmarks->Bookmark This Page...:

  3. A dialog box will come up asking where to save the bookmark:

  4. Once the bookmark is set, return to the Bookmarks menu and right-click on the new Google bookmark.
  5. In the right-click menu on the Google bookmark, select Properties:

  6. A dialog box with three tabs will appear: Info, Schedule, and Notify. First, click on Schedule.
  7. We can schedule FireFox to tell us if Google is updated. Let's tell it to check for an update "Every Day", from "Midnight" to "1am", every "hhhh" minutes. Notice that we are actually typing in "hhhh" in the minute(s) option box:

  8. Now click on the Notify tab. We must tell FireFox what to do when it notices an update. In Notify, check "Display an Alert":

  9. Now click 'OK'.

Results/Relevance

Not only were we able to type non-numeric characters into the minute(s) option of the Schedule tab, but FireFox also allowed us to click 'OK' without any warnings or errors. Now we have to ask the question of what will happen once it actually does go to check for updates on our bookmarked page. Fortunately, it appears as if FireFox ignores our incorrect input, but that also means that if someone were to accidently type in any non-numeric characters (including decimals), they would never be informed of an update to the page.

This bug is not critical, in that it will not corrupt data or cause the computer harm, but it can cause frustration with users, especially with those who rely upon being informed of updates on a website for their job or project.

By implementing Domain testing, we focused on an input box and evaluated how well it handled inputs. The program handled bad input well in that the program did not crash, but its acceptance of our bad input is an unreliable and unexpected response.

Similar Tests/Additional Notes

Since Mozilla's FireFox is still in testing stages, it is a perfect application for practicing testing techniques. To practice Domain testing, search through the menu options in FireFox for more input boxes and see what the application will accept as input, and how the program will respond to that input.

Configuration Notes

Testing Mozilla's FireFox v0.9 on:

Created 15 June 2004 for the CSTER

All images and written material ©Copyright Sam Oswald 2004

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