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Author Topic: Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers  (Read 13293 times)

Renegade

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Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers
« on: December 09, 2012, 10:23 PM »
I whipped up a quick program to help authors and beta testers. (This is not a NANY submission, but just to help with any NANY submissions and beta testing.) I'll be using this myself later on and figured it would be just as easy to let others use it if they need.



Download:
* Screenshot - 2012-12-10 , 3_16_16 PM.png (35.16 kB. 691x488 - viewed 635 times.)

For the author, simply edit the Test.xml file, then zip up the EXE and XML file and give that to your beta testers.

Here's an entry:

Code: Text [Select]
  1. <TestItem>
  2.     <Name>Test item name</Name>
  3.     <Description>The default test description</Description>
  4.     <Passed>false</Passed>
  5.     <TesterComment>Tester comments go here.</TesterComment>
  6.   </TestItem>

You can add as many tests as you want.

Beta testers then open up the program and the Text.xml file automatically loads.

They can then go through the tests, and check whether it passed and add a comment if needed.

Once finished, they save the results as a flat tab-delimited TXT file, and email you the results. (Can be opened in Excel.)

Instructions and help are in the Test.xml file that automatically loads. You can see them in the screenshot above.

Very simple. Very easy.
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Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Ath

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Re: Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2012, 03:47 AM »
(This is not a NANY submission, but just to help with any NANY submissions and beta testing.)

I'd say this is a perfect NANY 2013 entry! :up:

Compact, Useful, Easy.

kyrathaba

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Re: Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2012, 06:17 AM »
Nifty utility, Ren. And I agree with Ath, it's perfect for a NANY submission.

Renegade

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Re: Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2012, 07:34 AM »
It's a bit too basic. It has a many areas for significant improvement:

  • Results should be in XML and a better Excel format
  • You should be able to open a file - configurable by author, e.g. a config file for the program to limit functionality
  • It should optionally submit to a web site (PHP/ASP/ASP.NET/whatever) with those scripts already written to either update a server database (with an admin UI), or send the results as an email to the author
  • It should optionally connect to email directly
  • It should have a test authoring tool along with it - I almost wrote one, but had to go change diapers and all that stuff :D
  • Lots more...

The Photo Resizer doesn't appear to be very popular. That's probably my fault as I didn't pimp out the extra functionality in it, e.g. it automatically keeps track of all your uploads and will let you view them all in a simple web page. And the amount of work that went into that was far from insignificant. I kind of didn't want to suffer another humiliation with an unpopular utility.

The FreeNAS password recovery... I probably shouldn't have submitted it in hind sight. It's very limited (intentionally due to the potential for abuse), but kind of too simple. It was also extremely simple to write. (I've done a lot of web automation before, and can do this kind of thing in my sleep.)

This is also extremely simple, and I figured it was too simple, but probably useful for some people that wanted/needed beta testing for NANY submission.

So, between being unpopular and being extremely simple, I figured I'd just throw it out in case anyone uses it. If it is used, I'll clean up the code/comments and put up the source. WTFPL would be a good license. :D

If it's useful for anyone, let me know along with any feature requests. I can probably whip it up pretty fast.
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kyrathaba

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Re: Beta Tester Tracker - Program to help authors & beta testers
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2012, 06:33 AM »
I kind of didn't want to suffer another humiliation with an unpopular utility.

None of mine have ever been popular (a few thousand downloads for the top couple), but I guess I don't set my expectations high, as I'm only a hobbyist. I've found several of your apps useful on multiple occassions.