Creating New Profiles in FireFox

 

Summary

When using FireFox, individuals can personalize the browser to their own needs by storing their settings in a profile. In the latest version of FireFox, however, none of the profile settings are accessible via the paths listed in the help documentation.

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 Specification-based testing (or Spec-based testing). When Spec-based testing, the tester analyzes the program's performance based on what the specifications state.

For this presenation, we are looking at the specifications for creating a new user profile in Mozilla FireFox. A profile keeps track of a user's specific cookies, browsing history, bookmarks, themes, and personal data. The use of profiles can help protect data and provide a personalized browser setting. We will read through the Help documentation on how to create a new profile and follow the documentation for testing that profile.

Spec-based testing can be useful for determining the proper function of a program if the tester is unaware of how the program should perform. It is also useful to verify that the program and documentation match each other, such that users will be able to read the documentation to use the program correctly. However, keep in mind that documentation is often out of date or written by people who have not worked with the program directly.

Performing the Test

  1. Open Mozilla FireFox.
  2. Open the Help documentation by clicking on Help->Help Contents:

  3. Once inside the Help Contents window, we want to click on 'Search' and look for "profile":

    We want to look at the help topics for creating a profile, so click on "Creating a New Profile".

  4. In the Help Contents, we see that to create a new profile, our first step is to open the Profile Manager. Do so by clicking on Start->Run from your start menu. Then browse to your Mozilla FireFox directory and type Firefox.exe -P. Finally, click 'OK'.

    A browser window opens to the default home page. No profile manager window opens, but it did not say it would in step 1 of the Help instructions.

  5. The next step in the Help Contents documentation says to click on the 'Create Profile' button, but it appears as if the profile manager has not launched:

    Similarly, the rest of the instructions refer to performing actions inside a window that has not opened up. There are no buttons in the browser window either as described in the Help documentation.

Results/Relevance

We can not even finish the rest of the test to verify if the profile manager works correctly because it does not appear to work at all! We can also search through the rest of the Help Contents for hints on how to find the profile manager, but unfortunately none of these will work either. It appears as if the profile manager is not working, according to our specifications, and this is therefore an area of major concern. If we do some research online, we can find a lot of information describing the ability for profile-based browsing in Mozilla browsers such as FireFox, and this is a feature for which many users will be looking.

Though our own browsing was not significantly affected by the lack of profiles, simply the fact that our passwords and personal information will be seen by other users (since no other profiles can be created) is a critical security flaw.

Specification-based testing is very useful for finding areas to test. By looking up a common feature like shortcut commands or help features, we see an entire list of components that we can then quickly and systematically test.

Similar Tests/Additional Notes

More information about bugs in the Profile Manager function, check Mozilla's Bugzilla site.

Reading the documentation, even if out of date, can often provide a fundamental (and extremely valuable) understanding of what a program does. If you do not have much experience with a program that you are required to test, try reading the documentation first. You most likely will find it much easier to navigate through the program's functions and components.

Configuration Notes

Testing Mozilla's FireFox v0.9.2 on:

Created 03 August 2004 for the CSTER

All images and written material ©Copyright Sam Oswald 2004

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