Thunderbird:Testdays

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<< Back to Thunderbird Testing

Welcome to the Thunderbird Test Day wiki!

With help from the Thunderbird / Mozilla Messaging team, join us to test Thunderbird. We also invite you to inform yourself via Thunderbird wiki pages about the state of Thunderbird, version 3, and how you might help improve this great messaging platform.

We also run bugdays, in which you can participate and help plan.

Who

You, and others interested in the future of Thunderbird.

No coding, (almost*) no experience required. Anyone can participate and be a valuable contributor. There are people available to assist you. You must however run code which is development status.

* It will help if you have used Thunderbird for 2-3 months.

Why

Test days are about assessing how good a specific version of Thunderbird is for a population of users larger than the core of people involved in coding the fixes and improvements. A larger population is essential because a diverse set of testers on a diverse set of computers is required to ferret out problems which are themselves ... diverse. Testing the code also helps find its functional weaknesses, and confirms its strengths.

Note - currently there are lots (LOTS!) of bugs - some of which we evaluate during Bug Days. We invite you to join us on bug days which occur every Thursday. Bug days are designed to help newcomers in the process of cleaning up the database and drive down the line in this chart.

Schedule

Multiple staffed sessions allow you to participate during the evening or during daytime at any location in the world. You may attend any or all sessions. If you can't attend a scheduled session please drop in between sessions - someone might be hanging out who can help you. If you can't participate in this day's activity, we invite you to participate in a future QA Day.

Click in a UTC link below to get the session start time for your point on the globe.

Sessions
Timezone Session 1
13h-15h UTC		 Session 2
19h-21h UTC 		Session 3
02h-05h UTC
Los Angeles, USA   (PDT=UTC-8+1) Thu 06h-08h Thu 12h-14h Thu 19h-22h
New York, USA   (EDT=UTC-5+1) Thu 09h-11h Thu 15h-17h Thu 22h-01h
São Paulo, Brazil   (UTC-4+1) Thu 10h-12h Thu 16h-18h Thu 23h-02h
UK   (BST) Thu 14h-16h Thu 20h-22h Fri 03h-06h
Berlin, Germany   (CEST=UTC+1+1) Thu 15h-17h Thu 21h-23h Fri 04h-07h
Moscow, Russia   (UTC+3+1) Thu 17h-19h Thu 23h-01h Fri 06h-09h
Beijing, China   (UTC+8) Thu 21h-23h Fri 03h-04h Fri 10h-13h

Where

You can get help on test day in IRC channel #testday. Prior to the scheduled date you can get help on preparing by asking in #maildev.)

How

If you have a question, encounter a problem, or are not familiar with our bug tracking system (bugzilla) post a note in the #testday IRC channel. If you don't get a response consult the channel header for the person on call and ping them by name. Or ping a channel operator. If you are new to bugzilla you won't be able to change most bug fields, but you can add a comment detailing what should be changed and why. You can also make your comments known in the #testday channel and someone will assist you. (optional) See Bug triage about how to get upgraded privileges to be able to change bug fields.

Notes:

  • Caution: Version 3 alpha 1 is not a release candidate - it is early development level/trunk code that has not be subjected to extensive quality tests. Many people successfully use it on a daily basis without major problems or data loss. However, use at your own risk and protect your data with appropriate backups.
  • Version 3.0a1 is not anywhere near feature complete. See http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Home for details and planning information about the future of Thunderbird.
  • Don't expect most extensions to work. To test an extension that doesn't pass version checking, at your own risk you can install Nightly Tester Tools extension to override version checking - find it at Triage_Resources, Tools, and Hints. Report results to extension author.

For Test Day of Thunderbird Alpha 1, install the new version and report your findings via bug reports and other feedback options.

  1. Check the (substitute) release notes
  2. Get a build and use custom install to put it its own directory.
  3. Protect - Backup your profile data. Create and use a test profile. You might also want to back up your imap or pop mail store.
  4. Test suggestions - do one or more of the following:
    • Exercise your favorite (or least favorite) Thunderbird functions and provide feedback. Examples: account setup, large scale POP and imap downloads, filters, junk mail processing to name a few.
    • Try new capabilities of Thunderbird 3 - New Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) shows recommended Add-ons. (Note: few add-ons are compatible with this early alpha, as add-on developers need to upgrade them.) Address book can now read Mac OS X's system Address Book but is currently disabled by default. To enable it, see this blog entry. New Crash Reporter (Breakpad). Searching message bodies no longer produces as many false positives and is more accurate in some multilingual situations. Improved performance through javascript. Thunderbird is now a native Cocoa application on Mac.
    • Test Thunderbird on multiple operating systems, if you have multiple OS.
    • Test reported crashers, hangs, etc. Update bug if needed per instructions below.
  5. Bugs - Update or file new bugs for problems that you encounter:
    • Get a Bugzilla account if you don't have one - easily created at bugzilla.
    • Remember to always cite in the bug your version of Thunderbird.
    • Did you start in "safe mode" to avoid problems caused by extensions?
    • File new bugs for new problems.
    • For already reported bugs ... update the bug only if status has changed, the bug needs improvement, or there is new information. A comment of "This still exists in TB 3.0a1" is needed only if the report indicates the bug should not exist on trunk.
      • For UNCONFIRMED bugs, attempt to replicate the problem specified in the bug report. Mark (or comment) as "confirmed" if you are able to replicate and steps to reproduce are well documented and easily followed and the problem exists in trunk build. If you are not running trunk but can replicate with current release, please comment but do not confirm. If you are running trunk, cannot replicate, and the issue is presumed easy to recreate then you might close it dupe, WFM, or INVALID.

        Other helpful steps include:

      • Clarify bug reports without distorting or changing the original problem (note: simply stating this bug still occurs in version xxx isn't helpful unless you are confirming the bug at the same time)
      • Change the summary to be more accurate to the problem being reported, and if appropriate remove words so summary is less chatty
      • Close bug reports as WORKSFORME, INVALID, or INCOMPLETE when it's appropriate to do so (see status descriptions to find out what is appropriate).
      • Ask bug reporter in a bug comment to provide missing information that will help to replicate and ultimately fix the bugs they report.
  6. Give feedback about your Test Day experience. (see feedback heading below)

Please check these for more helpful information working with bugs:

Give us feedback

In addition to filing any bugs, please post about your experience - problems, questions, ideas to improve documentation, where you learned about testday, and overall thoughts about Thunderbird - in #testday, #maildev or Mozilla Feedback (pick product=Thunderbird Release Candidate)

We really appreciate your help today and your feedback is very valuable.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for your help. Your efforts help us to improve Thunderbird. We could never do this without you and the entire volunteer community.

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