Litmus:Extension

Key Links

• See the project Status Page
• Notification system design

Current Status

The Status Page (updated from time to time) has Zach's detailed task list, a broad overview is below:

• General
  • Everything needs theming/styling/beautification
  • Content!
• Feature Areas
  • QMO Tab
    • Feeds are all being updated live from QMO, created a couple of custom QMO views for the various content areas
  • Litmus Tab
    • Mockup and testcase retrieval are in place and working. Result submission is almost working
    • Need design and implementation for testgroup selection and other work in this area
  • Bugzilla Tab
    • It's displaying a static page on QMO for now, need to write content (links to docs)
  • Chat Tab
    • Chatzilla is bundled with the extension. Clicking the chat button launches a chat window and connects to irc
  • Settings Tab
    • Preferences for Litmus account info and notifications are built and working. Litmus account gets validated before saving.
    • Need opsys/platform/locale settings
  • Help Tab
    • Will be a static page hosted on QMO like the Bugzilla tab. Need content.
  • Initial Setup
    • Mostly complete, have account creation, existing account login, settings
    • Settings needs a little more work
    • Account creation code needs to be secured
  • Notifications
    • Specification complete and on the wiki. Need to implement and need to design Hermes (notification server)

Initial Mockups

See some screencaps at [1]

Goals

• Make it easier for new testers to get started
• Allow testers to view tests and submit results from a separate window inside the app
• Make testers feel valued and encourage them to keep testing
• Help integrate testers into the community
• Encourage participation in special events (testdays, pre-release testing, etc...)

Feature Areas

• Initial setup
  • Helps users get setup with an account if they don't already have a Litmus account. Provides an introduction to Mozilla QA, what we do, how testing works.
  • One guided process from installing the extension to submitting their first test result, real easy and welcoming
• Running tests
  • Select a testing area. Mozilla QA can push recommended areas to users to test around new code/features.
  • Run a test, select a result, next test is shown
  • Positive feedback to users: you've run this many tests, top testers of the week, etc...
• Community aspects
  • Joga-style notification of special testing events, linking directly to the relevant set of tests and IRC
  • Links to QMO resources that encourage people to get involved in other QA areas: bug days, bugzilla triage, etc...

Other ideas

• Direct link into IRC to bring testers into #qa/#testday
• David Hamp, a student at Seneca, was working on a Litmus extension but apparently didn't have much time to devote to the project during the past school year. Zach emailed him to determine what he's done and whether he's interested in working more on this. Reply: seems like he's extremely busy right now, but interested in the long-term.
• Branch/build detection to encourage testers to use current builds and to test RCs before releases. Target tests and messages to branch and trunk users.
• Need standard Big Warnings about using development software. Automatic profile backup? Need docs on how to manage having multiple versions installed and such.
• Other tabs/buttons to hook into QMO

Naming

• QMO Extension? Integrate the QMO branding
• Tie this in with the Mozilla beta program concept somehow?
• Hermes - Notification server
• Need a Greek name for the extension ;-)

Content pulled from external urls

• QMO
  • Upcoming Events feed - the event feed
  • Recent forum posts feed - Pulled from an rss feed generated from a custom view that pulls the 10 most recent forum topics by creation date
  • The latest from QMO - Generated from the top post in the main RSS feed
  • How you can help! - Pulled from an rss feed that is automatically generated from this QMO page
• Bugzilla
  • Currently, the Bugzilla tab displays an rss feed that is automatically generated from this QMO page
• Litmus
  • extension.cgi and json.cgi (now landed in CVS)
• Notifications
  • Served by Hermes, accessed through http://litmus.mozilla.org/hermes/1/ (currently just a static xml document). The key directory on the litmus server is /opt/webtools/hermes