Optionless Extension Error in FireFox

 

Summary

Mozilla FireFox integrates Extension technology, the ability for users to extend the capabilities of FireFox by creating plugins that alter the behavior or appearance of the application. The Extension Manager function does not operate correctly however. If a user attempts to look at the options for an extension that does not have any options, rather than display a warning, the Extension Manager freezes.

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 Function testing. In Function testing, we evaluate the application by locating and isolating functions, then interacting with the functions and observing how well each can perform its task.

For this presentation, we are looking at the Extension Manager's Extension Options function. After installing an extension, a user can change the way the extension behaves by altering its options. Some extensions do not require (or are not programmed with) options, however, and therefore the 'Options' button is unable to perform the expected task of opening the options window.

We expect that if we ask the Extension Manager to display the options for an extension that does not have any options, it will either display an error message, give us a warning, or inform us with any other type of alert that options for that extension are not available.

Function testing is typically the general testing that is first performed on an application, mostly to verify that everything works in its most basic form (that all of the functions will at least start and operate). Function testing can help us decide whether further testing of the application is worth our time, and also what kinds of tests might work well in later testing.

Performing the Test

  1. Open Mozilla FireFox.
  2. To open the Extension Manager, click on Tools->Extensions:

  3. The Extentsion manager will now open and display a list of the installed extensions. To get more extensions to install for running this test yourself, click on the "Get More Extensions" button in the bottom right:

  4. To view the options for an extension, click on the icon to the left of the extension name that looks like a check mark (the top icon). You can also double-click on the extension itself to open the options menu. For example, let's look at the options for the DOM Inspector, an extension that comes with all releases of FireFox:

Results/Relevance

The extension that was selected, the DOM Inspector, has no available options for it. After clicking on the options icon, an alert 'beep' is played, and the user is then unable to close the Extension Manager, move the side scrollbar, select a different extension, or do anything else within the Extension Manager. Any mouse clicks inside the Extension Manager result in more alert 'beeps'.

Closing FireFox manually still leaves the Extension Manager open and unresponsive, which means that the only way to close the Extension Manager at this point is to use Alt-Ctrl-Del and end the FireFox application from the Windows Task Manager.

Function testing helped us look at the basic functionality of the Extensions Options sub-function of the Extension Manager and establish that it was not working correctly. By doing this, we know that further testing of this sub-function might waste our testing team's time, since this feature does not work at all and needs much more programming dedication before we can effectively test it. However, we now have the knowledge of generally what is broken, and it is that knowledge that we pass back to the programmers to help fix the bug.

Similar Tests/Additional Notes

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 v0.9.3 on:

Created 04 August 2004 for the CSTER

All images and written material ©Copyright Sam Oswald 2004

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