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International Quality Assurance
Katsuhiko Momoi
Last Update: 5/27/99
News:
-
M6 build will be relased very soon - within a few
days! Check the Mozilla
page for the latest release news. Follow the "Detailed Current Build
& Testing status" link below for more information on this new Milestone
build.
-
Updates have been made to: International QA Volunteers Contact List &
M6 testing info page. Follow the link below. If you would like to join
the volunteer group, please read on and write to us with the info requested.
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Experts in Latin 3 (Esperanto) and Traditional Chinese (XML in particular)
among others have been added to the Testing Volunteers List.
Links:
How we got here:
From its inception, Netscape has been strongly committed to serving
the needs of international users. For example, we introduced a fully Japanese-capable
browser in the Spring of 1995 and started the Internet boom there. Along
the way, we added support for other languages, character sets, and features
international users requested . If going for the open source Mozilla development
seems like a natural extension of what we have been doing, that's because
from the very beginning we have always depended on the help of our users
to improve our products. This has been particularly true in Internationalization.
To support many languages and varied requirements of these languages with
a relatively small number of staff members, we vitally needed bug reports
and suggestions from our users. And we have not been disappointed -- you
have enthusiastically responded with bug reports, suggestions, and words
of encouragement.
How we want to get there: You can help!
Because we are committed to the spirit of open source development, we
would like to invite you to get involved in all phases of developing the
Mozilla client for International users. Those of us involved in International
Quality Assurance (IQA) for the Netscape-branded client are in the process
of identifying people who would like to help out. We have asked
some of our long-standing friends and have already received positive responses
from them. We plan to publish in the near future a list of volunteer testers
classified along languages and components or features.
Here are some possible ways you can help us.
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Become a contact/organizer for the language/character set of your interest/specialty
-- we will soon publish contact lists.
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Testing with different features or components
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Providing us with real language data for testing a feature or component
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Testing for localizability -- making sure that the client is easily localizable
into most of the world's languages
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Identifying User Interface related problems
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Testing for the compliance of international standards
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Giving feedback on existing test specifications and test cases
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Writing/submitting test specifications and test cases
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Identifying bugs and verifying bugs
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Or any other help which will make the Mozilla client a better product for
international users.
If you'd like to help, please send us a note including the information
on:
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Your name and Email address
-
Language or Character set you would like to work on
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A feature or component you are most interested in -- e.g. Layout, Browser,
Mail/News, JavaScript, etc.
-
Platforms you can cover -- Macintosh, Unix (Linux in particular), Windows.
Please
also include what language OS you can cover.
-
Any special talents (e.g. programming languages) or expertise (knowledge
of specialized areas) you can bring to this project
-
Other relevant information
Important Note: Some international
users might be primarily interested in looking at general features rather
than "international" features. For example, you use French Windows/Mac/Unix
OS and want to see how 5.0 client's CSS works under it but you are not
really interested in international features. People with these interests
should read Component group pages found here,
and send a message clearly stating which component you want to help with.
If you are interested in testing for specific languages, character
sets, international data related features, international standards, and
other international issues and concerns, then please begin the Subject
line of your message with "Intl QA: ...", e.g. "Intl QA: I want to help
with Chinese tests" and,
please send to: clientqa-coord@netscape.com
Please also indicate in your mail if it's OK for us to publish your
name and e-mail address along with your expertise areas on this Volunteers
List.
Your level of help can vary depending on how much time and energy you
have for this common project. In different components or languages, we
hope to establish some volunteer leaders who can help organize other contributors.
In the coming weeks, we plan to publish a set of core/basic international
test cases, names/e-mail addresses of volunteer contributors, a page with
information for a variety of international testing and debugging tools,
test submission guidelines, etc.
Your personal information will not be used for anything other than communicating
with you about your testing assistance. If you do take a role in the testing
process, your name and email information (with your approval) will be published
to the QA Contacts page.
Let's together make the next client a great Internet tool for international
users!
Current Status
of International QA: a brief summary
-
M6
milestone build - almost done or done in a few days:
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If you want to use the M6 build, please see the detailed
International M6 status and testing information at this
page.
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Working on: the next milestone M7: (A summary plan
& status for M6 will be coming soon....)
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Test plans:
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In the process of getting ready to externalize the
International basic test case set for Browser/Mail.
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Working on M7 testing. Latest binaries to download
and try out can be found here.
If you want to build from source, go here.
If you find a bug, please file a bug at Bugzilla.
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