QA Hates You

How much malevolence can you fit into 140 characters?  Find out by following QA Hates You on Twitter.

eWeek thanks me for requesting a new subscription even though I was only filling out their quarterly “annual” subscription update.  Additionally, they included a typo in their e-mail:

Click for full size

You know what I don’t need?  An e-mail with a Euro sign in it.  If you’re going to talk to me about money, use a real currency, please.

In a cast-a-wide-net e-mail from recruiter, I note three distinct bullet styles:

Click for full size

We have:

• Hyphens (-)
• Xs
• No bullets

I love the amount of conscientiousness spent here trying to woo a quality professional.  You know how they say that when you interview with a company, you’re interviewing the company, too?  Well, I say when you send me your documentation about a job, I see your resume.  And I’m not going to call back something this rife with errors.

Because this recruiter would no doubt take as good of care of Applicant 9748 (that would be me)  as he did of Blast E-mail 298.

From On Duty, Book One:

It may sometimes, however, be necessary to express disapproval.  On such occasions we should perhaps use a sharper tone of voice and sterner expressions, and even put an appearance of anger.  But we should resort to this kind of reproof seldom, and with reluctance, as we do to cautery and amputation, and never unless it is necessary, and no other remedy can be found.  And there must be no real anger, for anger that prevents all fair, considered action.  In most cases a mild reproof is enough, but gravely administered, so as to show its seriousness and avoid insult to the feelings.  We must make it plan too that whatever harshness there was in our reproof was intended only for the good of the person reproved.

As a grain of salt, remember Cicero was executed for reproving Mark Antony, so you can draw an important lesson from this: reproval of someone with legions and swords trumps reproval of some dude feigning anger in a meeting.

WISN in Wisconsin might be tipping off a little contempt for its users when it flashes the following on its screen when its media player loads:

 
Click for full size

I suppose it could be displaying a zeroish variable valuable that indicates no listeners are chatting or that that module is not activated.  But, as QA, I walk around with a perpetual chip on my shoulder, and I assume that they’re talking about me.  Are they?  ‘Cause I don’t see anyone else here.

Optimists vs. Pessimists vs. Testers and others in the IT pantheon.

Thanks to gimlet for the pointer.

The Washington Examiner provides a healthy dose of lessons in hosting Web banner ads.  Let’s enumerate them.

(more…)

Who can spot the problem within this page of a Sesame Street book?

Click for full size

Would you have let that slide?  Me, either.

The current Jeopardy! champion, Stefan Goodreau, with three wins as of Wednesday, is described as a video game tester.  Hey, it might just mean he sits on a couch and plays the latest releases as they come out, but he’s winning consistently and hopefully making the “cerebral” developers question themselves.

Ha, just kidding.  Like vampires, developers have no reflection.

Note to job seekers:  Stefan has already won more this week than you will earn in any job posted on Craigslist.

Evenflo produces a number of gerbil machines for children, including the new ExerSaucer^® WalkAround™ device which looks like a training system for medieval whipped-man driven millstones.

The main Web page looks like this:

Click for full size

Go to the Safety/Recall page, though, and you’re in for it:

Click for full size

Aside from the fact that the application tips some document information the first time you visit it, it springs a JavaScript error for you. The resource isn’t playing well across subdomains, it seems, and my pngs are unfixed since I’m using Internet Explorer.

As a reminder, you need to pay close attention when your Web site uses different subdomains.  Make sure your developers haven’t used relative paths to resources that aren’t there and that they haven’t locked parts of your site out from resources they actually need.

QA should, that’s who.

For example, if you take a little time to submit the comments form on this page without entering information, it throws up a JavaScript error:

Click for full size

It kind of looks like it’s checking for a checkbox that isn’t on the form.  As if it was copied from somewhere else with a “Remember me?” link, such as a login.

Copied and not tested.  I’d like to tell you the trick for testing for this sort of failure, but the only trick is to test.

But it’s a Web 2.0 world.  Testing was so Web 0.9 (beta).

I got nothing this morning, so let’s turn up some AC/DC to get the week started, okay?

Dustbury thinks it’s a formatting failure.  However, I think it’s more akin to a free verse poem, where the stage direction is spoken as well as the text that is supposed to be marked up.  You judge.

An e-mail from Random House includes Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and social networking links:

Click for full size

So how does that work?  Not well:

Click for full size

The link in the headline works and leads to the actual Web site, where these links work:

Click for full size

Random House seems to be generating the e-mail directly from its content management system to ill effect.  Of course, they’re not bothering to look at the e-mails in any detail before sending them out.  This is not the way adults should behave.

Sorry to go back to this well twice in one day, but:

 The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.

A new promotion from Major League Baseball and Sharp AQUOS is not without its problems.

Like misspelling favorite:

Click for full size

Now, say you’re filling out the fields and tabbing along, and you hit this:

Click for full size

What on earth?  Well, if you dispel the error message, you will see the problem:

Click for full size

Sorry, my fault.  I needed to set the password to at least one number and one character.  It was all better when I set it to 0iago.

Finally, that birthday calendar widget doesn’t fit if it’s five rows long when viewed in Firefox:

Click for full size

To quote a great philosopher, can’t anbody here play this game?

Apparently, a problem with VISA debit cards charged a number of consumers $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.  Plus $20 for going over the limit.  Oh, and suspending the cards.

I have seen too clearly how few test cases are required to pass before a payment application is ready to go live.  Which is why I use the original on-line bill paying: wampum.

When relying on 3rd party Web services to handle your security, note that you might experience form abandonment even if your Web site is not actively sucking:

Click for full size

 Heckuva job, Brownie.

I need to find the publishing house behind the standard developer dictionary and burn it down.

Click for full size

The development team behind this Craftsman NASCAR sweepstakes misspell occurred.  I don’t know why developers commonly misspell this word.  Are they copying and pasting it from the same Platonic nearly-ideal error message?  Is it misspelled in a default message in every IDE known to man?  Is it some hopeful invocation that the occult will cure the problem?  Who can read the minds of developers?  Whenever I try, I get gibberish interspersed with attention to shiny things.

When you’re testing out your application’s validation, watch for the single-R occured.  You will see them everywhere.

The White House has a budget of $5 million annually for its communications team.

However, apparently none of that has been wasted on proofreaders, since press releases and diplomatic agreements include numerous misspellings, including the President’s very name.

I was going to make some comment about having to pay extra attention to uncommon words such as brand names and people’s names, which often plagues interactive agency communications that misspell their clients’ names or even their own agency names.  However, this problem with the communications team seems to go far beyond that and into lack of attention to detail.

For $172,200 a year, I could head up the effort.  White House, click the Sez Who? link for contact info!