GUI Testing and WebTesting_Checklist

GUI Testing Checklist

This GUI test checklist can ensure that all the GUI components are thoroughly tested. 

 GUI Objects:

Window, Dialog Box, Push Button, Radio Button, Radio Group, Tool bar, Edit Box, Text Box, Check Box, List Box, Drop down Box, Combo Box, Tab, Tree view, progress bar, Table, Scroll bar, Spin Etc... 
Windows Compliance Standards 

These compliance standards are followed by almost all the windows based application. Any variance from these standards can result into inconvenience to the user. This compliance must be followed for every application. These compliances can be categorized according to following criteria 

1. Compliance for each Application

1. Application should be started by double clicking on the icon.
2. Loading message should have information about application name, version number, icon etc.
3. Main window of application should have same caption as the icon in the program manager.
4. Closing of the application should result in “Are you sure?” message.
5. Behavior for starting application more than once must be specified.
6. Try to start application while it is loading
7. On every application, if application is busy it should show hour glass or some other mechanism to notify user that it is processing.
8. Normally F1 button is used for help. If your product has help integrated, it should come by pressing F1 button.
9. Minimize and restoring functionality should work properly

2. Compliance for each Window in the Application 

1. Window caption for every application should have application name and window name. Specially, error messages.
2. Title of the window and information should make sense to the user.
3. If screen has control menu, use the entire control menu like move, close, resize etc.
4. Text present should be checked for spelling and grammar.
5. If tab navigation is present, TAB should move focus in forward direction and SHIFT+TAB in backward direction.
6. Tab order should be left to right and top to bottom within a group box.
7. If focus is present on any control, it should be presented by dotting lines around it.
8. User should not be able to select greyed or disabled control. Try this using tab as well as mouse.
9. Text should be left justified
10. In general, all the operations should have corresponding key board shortcut key for this.
11. All tab buttons should have distinct letter for it.

3. Text boxes

1. Move mouse to textbox and it should be changed to insert bar for editable text field and should remain unchanged for non-editable text field.
2. Test overflowing textbox by inserting as many characters as you can in the text field. Also test width of the text field by entering all capital W.
3. Enter invalid characters, special characters and make sure that there is no abnormality.
4. User should be able to select text using Shift + arrow keys. Selection should be possible using mouse and double click should select entire text in the text box.

4. Radio Buttons

1. Only one should be selected from the given option.
2. User should be able to select any button using mouse or key board
3. Arrow key should set/unset the radio buttons.

5. Check boxes

1. User should be able to select any combination of checkboxes
2. Clicking mouse on the box should set/unset the checkbox.
3. Spacebar should also do the same

6. Push Buttons

1. All buttons except OK/Cancel should have a letter access to them. This is indicated by a letter underlined in the button text.  The button should be activated by pressing ALT
2. Clicking each button with mouse should activate it and trigger required action.
3. Similarly, after giving focus SPACE or RETURN button should also do the same.
4. If there is any Cancel button on the screen, pressing Esc should activate it.

8. Drop down list boxes
1. Pressing the arrow should give list of options available to the user. List can be scrollable but user should not be able to type in.
2. Pressing Ctrl-F4 should open the list box.
3. Pressing a letter should bring the first item in the list starting with the same letter.
4. Items should be in alphabetical order in any list.
5. Selected item should be displayed on the list.
6. There should be only one blank space in the dropdown list.

8. Combo Box

1. Similar to the list mentioned above, but user should be able to enter text in it.
9. List Boxes
1. Should allow single select, either by mouse or arrow keys.
2. Pressing any letter should take you to the first element starting with that letter
3. If there are view/open button, double clicking on icon should be mapped to these behavior.
4. Make sure that all the data can be seen using scroll bar.

Web Applications Testing

I) Overview:

Now a days Web Applications are getting more popular in the IT Industry, having so many advantages like supporting more clients, no client side installation and accessing from any ware etc…

Types of Web Application

We can categorize web applications in two ways

a)    Business Classification

1)     Web Sites (They provide information about Organizations or Industries or persons)

2)    Web Portals (They are Business gateways, ex: Online Shopping sites, Job portals etc.)

3)     Web Applications (They are Service providers (both Free and Paid), apart from information) Ex: Net Banking Applications, Insurance Applications etc…)

b)    Technical Classification

1)     Intranet Applications (They are private applications, uses local area network (LAN))

2)     Internet Applications (They are Public applications, uses Wide area network (WAN)

3)     Extranet Applications (They also Private applications over Internet (WAN))

Browser:

It is a Software Application, which retrieves, and Presents information in text, image and voice like different file formats.

The browser is the viewer of a Web Site and there are so many different browsers and browser options that a well-done Web Site is probably designed to look good on as many browsers as possible.

Popular Browsers:

1)     Internet Explorer

2)     Mozilla Firefox

3)     Google Chrome

4)     Safari

5)     Opera

Etc…

II) Web Technologies:

         

Ø       HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) – for displaying web pages

Ø       XML (Extensible Markup Language) –for Transporting the Data

Ø       Java Script – for Client Side Validations

Ø       VB Script – for Server side Validations

Ø       IIS, Apache, Tomcat, Pramathi – as Web servers

Ø       JBoss, WebLogic, WebSpeare, COM+ - as Application Servers

Ø       Java, C#.NET, VB.NET, VC++.NET for Components development

Ø       SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL  as Database Servers

Ø       HTTP, SOAP – as Protocols

III) Web Testing

Functionality Testing:

Test for - all the links in web pages, database connection, forms used in the web pages for submitting or getting information from user, Cookie testing.

Check all the links:

• Test the outgoing links from all the pages from specific domain under test.
• Test all internal links.
• Test links jumping on the same pages.
• Test links used to send the email to admin or other users from web pages.
• Test to check if there are any orphan pages.
• Lastly in link checking, check for broken links in all above-mentioned links.

Test forms in all pages:

Forms are the integral part of any web site. Forms are used to get information from users and to keep interaction with them. So what should be checked on these forms?

• First check all the validations on each field.
• Check for the default values of fields.
• Wrong inputs to the fields in the forms.
• Options to create forms if any, form delete, view or modify the forms.

Cookies testing:

Cookies are small files stored on user machine. These are basically used to maintain the session mainly login sessions. Test the application by enabling or disabling the cookies in your browser options. Test if the cookies are encrypted before writing to user machine. If you are testing the session cookies (i.e. cookies expire after the sessions ends)check for login sessions and user stats after session end. Check effect on application security by deleting the cookies.

 

Validate your HTML/CSS:

If you are optimizing your site for Search engines then HTML/CSS validation is very important. Mainly validate the site for HTML syntax errors. Check if site is crawl able to different search engines.

Database testing:

Data consistency is very important in web application. Check for data integrity and errors while you edit, delete, modify the forms or do any DB related functionality. Check if all the database queries are executing correctly, data is retrieved correctly and also updated correctly. More on database testing could be load on DB, we will address this in web load or performance testing below.

Usability Testing:

Test for navigation:

Navigation means how the user surfs the web pages, different controls like buttons, boxes or how user using the links on the pages to surf different pages.
Usability testing includes:
Web site should be easy to use. Instructions should be provided clearly. Check if the provided instructions are correct means whether they satisfy purpose. Main menu should be provided on each page. It should be consistent.

Content checking:

Content should be logical and easy to understand. Check for spelling errors. Use of dark colors annoys users and should not be used in site theme. You can follow some standards that are used for web page and content building. These are common accepted standards like as I mentioned above about annoying colors, fonts, frames etc.
Content should be meaningful. All the anchor text links should be working properly. Images should be placed properly with proper sizes.
These are some basic standards that should be followed in web development. Your task is to validate all for UI testing

Other user information for user help:

Like search option, sitemap, help files etc. Sitemap should be present with all the links in web sites with proper tree view of navigation.Check for all links on the sitemap.
“Search in the site” option will help users to find content pages they are looking for easily and quickly. These are all optional items and if present should be validated.

Interface Testing:

The main interfaces are:
Web server and application server interface
Application server and Database server interface.

Check if all the interactions between these servers are executed properly. Errors are handled properly. If database or web server returns any error message for any query byapplication server then application server should catch and display these error messages appropriately to users. Check what happens if user interrupts any transaction in-between? Check what happens if connection to web server is reset in between?

Compatibility Testing:

Compatibility of your web site is very important testing aspect. See which compatibility test to be executed:

• Browser compatibility
• Operating system compatibility
• Mobile browsing
• Printing options

 Browser compatibility:

In my web-testing career I have experienced this as most influencing part on web site testing.
Some applications are very dependent on browsers. Different browsers have different configurations and settings that your web page should be compatible with. Your web site coding should be cross browser platform compatible. If you are using java scripts or AJAX calls for UI functionality, performing security checks or validations then give more stress on browser compatibility testing of your web application.
Test web application on different browsers like Internet explorer, Firefox, Netscape navigator, AOL, Safari, Opera browsers with different versions.

OS compatibility:

Some functionality in your web application is may not be compatible with all operating systems. All new technologies used in web development like graphics designs, interface calls like different API’s may not be available inall Operating Systems.
Test your web application on different operating systems like Windows, Unix, MAC, Linux, Solaris with different OS flavors.

Mobile browsing:

This is new technology age. So in future Mobile browsing will rock. Test your web pages on mobile browsers. Compatibility issues may be there on mobile.

Printing options:

If you are giving page-printing options then make sure fonts, page alignment, page graphics getting printed properly. Pages should be fit to paper size or as per the size mentioned in printing option.

Performance testing:

Web application should sustain to heavy load. Web performance testing should include:

Web Load Testing
Web Stress Testing

Test application performance on different internet connection speed.
In web load testing test if many users are accessing or requesting the same page. Can system sustain in peak load times? Site should handle many simultaneous user requests, large input data from users, Simultaneous connection to DB, heavy load on specific pages etc.

Stress testing:

Generally stress means stretching the system beyond its specification limits. Web stress testing is performed to break the site by giving stress and checked how system reacts to stress and how system recovers from crashes. Stress is generally given on input fields, login and sign up areas.
In web performance testing web site functionality on different operating systems, different hardware platforms is checked for software, hardware memory leakage errors,

Security Testing:

Following are some tests for web security testing:

• Test by pasting internal URL directly into browser address bar without login. Internal pages should not open.
• If you are logged in using username and password and browsing internal pages then try changing URL options directly. I.e. If you are checking some publisher site statistics with publisher site ID= 123. Try directly changing the URL site ID parameter to different site ID which is not related to log in user. Access should deny for this user to view others stats.
• Try some invalid inputs in input fields like login username, password and input text boxes. Check the system reaction on all invalid inputs.
• Web directories or files should not be accessible directly unless given download option.
• Test the CAPTCHA for automates scripts logins.
• Test if SSL is used for security measures. If used proper message should get displayed when user switch from non-secure http:// pages to secure https:// pages and vice versa.
• All transactions, error messages, security breach attempts should get logged in log files somewhere on web server.