Open Testing

Qchat has gone through a lot of testing prior to its completion. We felt that it was advantageous to open the testing to average users. Allowing people to make comments about the application before its completion allows for addition of features before the code is finalized. Also it is significantly easier to fix problems if they are detected shortly after the code being written as opposed to months after. As soon as Qchat was in working condition, it was advertised in several USENET newsgroups in an attempt to attract users. Users were asked to try out Qchat and report their comments, suggestions, and any bugs that they find via electronic mail. Advertising in various newsgroups had the benefit of being able to address a large number of people with a wide range of backgrounds and many different system configurations. The results have been very positive. We had approximately 10 people, out of approximately 100 that registered, who sent us their feedback, some of which have sent us reports numerous times. Their replies have helped us tremendously to further improve Qchat. Based on user input, not only have numerous bugs, such as text not scrolling properly, lack of word wrapping, and some others, been noticed and fixed, but new features have also been added to Qchat. For instance, several users suggested that it would be a good idea to provide an ability for users to customize the client. As a result we implemented user configurable appearance for the Qchat client. More information on bugs and suggestions submitted by testers can be found in the next section.

Aside from simply letting Qchat to be tested by outside users, we also spent a large amount of time testing Qchat. Qchat was tested using a variety of different configurations. Some of the platforms under which Qchat was being tested included OS/2, Windows 3.1, Windows95, WindowsNT, Solaris, as well as a number of others. Software used for this multiplatform testing included various versions of Netscape Navigator including v2.02, v3.0x, Netscape Communicator Preview 3, and Internet Explorer v3.0. This multi-platform testing allowed us to detect bugs that were platform specific, i.e. they would show up on some platforms but not on others.

Bugs Reported.

There have been a number bugs and suggestions have been sent to us by users. Following have been addressed:

User list not updating when users disconnect

'REMOVEUSER' message was not being sent from server to clients.

New channel appears only in creator's window

'ADDCHANNEL' message was not being sent from server to clients

Not checking for duplicates when adding a channel

A parsing routine that checks for duplicates has been added to client

Not checking for duplicates when adding a new user

A parsing routine that checks for duplicates has been added to CGI programs.

No wordwrapping in text output window

A routine has been added that checks the width of the string and wraps it at proper break between words to fit in the output window. The width of the output window varies, depending on individual settings, and is detected for each instance of the client.

Text not auto-scrolling in text output window.

Added Java API's 'selectAll()' routine after every text output in client.

User selectable window size, font, and colors.

A new HTML page added and a new CGI program added to record the settings in a text file. The settings are read and passed to on to client by the CGI program that starts the client. Client losing connection to server if browser window resized. Problem caused by browser calling the 'init' class each time after resizing. Because some of the networking routines were located in this class, connection was lost. This bug only appeared in Netscape, Internet Explorer must be using a different method of resizing windows.
Networking access routines have been moved from class 'init' to class 'start'

Private rooms

This suggestion was not implemented into the current version of Qchat due to lack of time and not being crucial to Qchat's functionality.

Qchat client crashing in Internet Explorer

This issue has not been addressed due to the non-standard implementation of Java in Internet Explorer.

Qchat CGI programs crashing Netscape 3.01 in Linux

Netscape for Linux was the only platform that was reported as having such problems. Since this bug was not reported on any other platform and due to lack of specifics on reporting user's part, it was attributed to a deficiency in the particular implementation of Netscape.