User Interface Implementation Testing

Programmers are able to find certain types of user interface problems better than other testers because they have a better understanding of how their code works and far better tools at their disposal for testing and debugging. Some problems are much easier to find by reviewing the source code and resource files directly.

A programmer can easily discover problems that are literally impossible for other testers to find. For example, a surprising number of programs don't use the system colors correctly. Instead of using system colors, many programmers mistakenly hardwire their pens and brushes to use various shades of gray, such as light gray for dialog boxes and button faces, white for 3-D highlights, and dark gray for 3-D shadows. However, these default color assignments can be changed by the user and are not used by all color schemes. Programs with these problems look absolutely awful using such color schemes. This problem is easy to detect if you develop using a color scheme that doesn't use any of the default colors with the possible exception of black text. You can also scan the source code for the incorrect use of pen and brush colors. But the important point I want to make is that this is the only way to detect this problem reliably. It's practically impossible to detect a problem like this during user testing. Such a problem could possibly be found during QA testing but only if the QA testers explicitly check for this problem or just happen to use a color scheme that has nondefault colors.

TIP

---

As a programmer, you can find user interface problems that are impossible for other testers to find.

Most of the remaining chapters in this part of the book describe the important user interface problems that programmers are best at uncovering. Here is a brief summary of these problems:

• Dialog box problems Typical dialog box problems include not displaying correctly in all video modes, not assigning the correct tab order, not using the group property correctly, and not assigning unique assess keys to all the interactive controls. These problems and more are described in detail in Chapter 29, "Check Your Dialog Boxes."
• Error message problems Typical error message problems include poorly worded, unhelpful text, incorrectly constructed error message text, and missing error messages. While programmers often have trouble finding such problems, they have the advantage of knowing what all the error messages are. These problems and more are described in detail in Chapter 30, "Check Your Error Messages."
• Printing problems Typical printing problems include not handling printer errors, not handling all paper sizes, not handling all printer resolutions, not handling both landscape and portrait modes, and not handling color printing correctly. These problems and more are described in detail in Chapter 31, "Check Your Printing."
• Setup program problems Typical setup program problems include making the installation process too complicated, making the setup results too complicated, asking unnecessary questions during setup, and copying files to the wrong folders. These problems and more are described in detail in Chapter 33, "Check Your Setup Program."
• System color problems Typical system color problems include using hardwired colors instead of system colors, mismatching system colors, and not responding to system color change messages. These problems are described in detail in Chapter 34, "Use System Colors."
• Video mode problems Typical video mode problems include windows and dialog boxes that do not display correctly in all supported video modes, window layouts that do not work well in all supported video modes, and using graphics that do not scale well. These problems are described in detail in Chapter 35, "Handle All Video Modes."
• Spelling errors You can quickly find spelling errors by extracting your string resources and running them through a spelling checker.

Once you get in the habit of checking for these types of problems, I think you'll discover that they are fairly easy to find and correct.