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Mail/News QA - Getting Started Information

by Lisa Chiang <lchiang@netscape.com>
last modified 04/11/00 13:30

There are tools and resources that you will need to become familiar with to make it easier for you to test. Take some time to read them. It's a good idea to bookmark some of these links/pages for future reference as you move forward to work with the QA team.

Just want to take a look at the latest released build and do some ad-hoc testing?

  • Read the release notes
  • Download the build, install, and run the application to bring up Mail.
  • Since the mail product is still in a pre-Beta stage and not all features are implemented, development is using a "dot" convention for unimplemented mail features. A "dot" (.) will be placed before each menu item name for features that aren't enabled yet.
Find a bug? Helping to verify reported bugs? Mozilla's bug tracking system is Bugzilla.
  • Get a Bugzilla account. You have to do this in order to enter or update/comment in any bug reports
  • Important! Read the bug writing guidelines. You need to familiarize yourself with this guideline so that your bug reports contain the pertinent information for development to process your bug report. Then file it in Bugzilla.
  • Understand the various components within the Mail/News product. You may need to get a Bugzilla account first.
  • Want to review some open bugs already in the MailNews product? For example, here is a list of all open bugs in the Front End area.
  • Some points to keep in mind:
    • If you think that you've found a bug, you should (1) perform a search to see if the bug has already been reported, (2) check the mail-news development newsgroup to see if there has been recent discussion on a feature, and (3) if a search doesn't turn up a bug report, go ahead and file one, making sure you follow the bug writing guidelines. If you are unsure of how to perform a search, please check with me. Be sure to narrow down your search scope by setting program=MailNews and by typing some key phrases in the Description field. For example, if you found a bug with line wrapping, you may want to type "line wrap" in the Description field.
Have some good test data? Want to review the tests that are written? Want to execute some tests?
  • Take a look at our test specifications page. Pick an area of interest and familiarize yourself with the tests for that area.
Want to keep on-top with what's going on in MailNews development and/or Mozilla project? Want to find out the milestones of upcoming features? Want to contribute your comments to development and QA discussions? Interested in a feature and want to read the UI specs?
  • Take a look at the engineering page. From here, you will be able to find out the development schedule to see when features are scheduled to be completed. You can also find links to development status, UI specs, and other useful information.
  • Read MozillaZine! - Source for Mozilla News and Advocacy.
  • New! #mozmail channel Join us on IRC on #mozillazine or #mozmail on the server irc.mozilla.org. - you'll find help there to get started and you can ask questions.
  • Subscribe to following newsgroups. The traffic on these newsgroups is not overwhelming :-). If you're just subscribing for the first time, read the most current postings to get you up-to-date!
Now What?

After you've gotten a chance to review some of the resources, you will have a better idea of what's available to help you get started with the QA process of Mozilla Mail/News. We'd like to encourage your participation to be relatively independent - trying out the newly released builds and participating in bug reports and joining in on the test reviews and testing. As you familiarize yourself with the QA process, newsgroups, milestones, resources, and open bugs, you will find yourself participating more and more. Soon, your level of involvement will be limited only by the amount of time that you're willing to spend!

Please send feedback and questions to me.



Most of the links on this page are summarized on our Mozilla Mail/News QA page.