Start up Windows Paint (see Figure 12.4) and look for several examples of documentation that should be tested. What did you find?
Figure 12.4. What examples of documentation can you find in Windows Paint?
A1:
Here are a few examples: There's rollover helpthe little pop-up descriptions you get when you hold the cursor over a painting tool. Selecting About Paint from the Help menu displays a window with copyright and licensing information. Pressing F1 starts the online help system where you can read the manual, select from an index, or type in words to search for. There's also function helpfor example, if you select Edit Colors from the Colors menu, click the ? in the title bar, and then click one of the colors, you'll get help about choosing and creating colors.
2:
The Windows Paint Help Index contains more than 200 terms from airbrush tool to zooming in or out. Would you test that each of these takes you to the correct help topics? What if there were 10,000 indexed terms?
A2:
Every testing task is a risk-based problem. If you have time to test all the index entries, you might choose to do so. If you can't test them all, you'll have to create equivalence partitions of the ones you think are important to check. You could base your decision on information you get from the programmers on how the index system works. You might talk with the writer to find out how the entries were generated. You might try one of each starting letter, or the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, 16th, … and last. You could even wait until you read Chapter 15, "Automated Testing and Test Tools."
3:
True or False: Testing error messages falls under documentation testing.
A3:
True. But, it's not just documentation testing. The content of the message needs to be tested as documentation, but forcing the message to appear and assuring that the correct message is displayed is testing the code.
4:
In what three ways does good documentation contribute to the product's overall quality?
A4:
Improved usability, improved reliability, and lower support costs.
