Litmus:Extension
Contents
Overview
The QA Community extension is meant to be an easy way to get community members involved in the QA process. It pulls testcases from Litmus and provides an response form, all within the extension interface. The extension also includes notifications for important QA events such as Bug Days, and keeps users up-to-date with live feeds from the QMO site and forums. Chatzilla is also bundled in with the extension, with one-click access to the #qa channel.
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
- General QMO tab -- updates on news, forums, etc.
- Litmus tab -- the heart of the extension. Allows users to get testcases and submit results from within the extension. A setup wizard detects most system settings and helps new users set up a Litmus account.
- Chatzilla tab -- one click launches the user into the wacky world of the #qa channel!
- Settings/Help, for the confused or misconfigured.
Current Status
Currently, we're circulating the extension among the qa team internally. We hope to push to a small group of community testers and eventually the larger QA community soon.
We need:
- Content writers. All of the content is pulled live from the QMO site, so all you have to do is edit or create some wiki pages.
- More testing. We have some early results coming in from the QA team, but most of the testing has been done ourselves, and we don't have great coverage so far. Also, comments on UI/UX would be great.
Other ideas
- Need standard Big Warnings about using development software. Automatic profile backup? Need docs on how to manage having multiple versions installed and such.
- Possible rewards system to encourage our testers. Maybe display lifetime/monthly/session number of test results submitted, with prizes for the winners! Or something.
- 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 ;-)
Installing the extension
The extension can be installed by browsing to: http://landfill.bugzilla.org/mozillaQA/latest.xpi (you'll need to click the link in the popup to allow landfill.bugzilla.org to install extensions) It works on the 2.0 branch and on the trunk. Just click the QMO logo in the browser's status bar to get started once you install.
(Note: We're still working out the bugs in this extension. Hopefully this will be ready for the prime time soon, but until then, download at your own risk!)
Content pulled from external urls
- QMO
- Upcoming Events feed - the event feed
- Jay created a new feed at http://quality.mozilla.org/extension/upcomingevents_feed and will update the code
- 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
- Upcoming Events feed - the event feed
- Bugzilla
- Currently, the Bugzilla tab displays an rss feed that is automatically generated from this QMO page
- UPDATE: For now, no live Bugzilla content.
- 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
Current Contributors
- Jay Patel -- project lead, ui development, qmo content
- Clint Talbert -- bug fixing, feature development
- Zach Lipton -- initial work, layout, notifications, prefs. Project member with CVS access.
- Ben Hsieh -- Litmus tab, some layout improvements.
- Zach Linder -- CSS, general theming.
Key Links
- See the project Status Page (perpetually out of date)
- Notification system design