Test periond half way

The test period for the beta-version 0.1 has now reached its half way point. It will end on March 1st. So far, of the 11 prediction made, only 2 has finished. This is as expected, as several of the predictions were made on events on March 1st.

The testing is not an organized, item by item test suite. Instead testing is performed indirectly by the players as most of them report back the errors they find as well as their ideas on how it should be improved. To give an example of how wide a range of errors can be found this way, here is the complete list of bugs found:

• In the main menu box in the upper left corner, the whole box is selected on mouse over, but you need to press the link in the text to get the intended action.


• For an admin, editing a news item is not possible.


• The log in time takes too long.


• Duplicate news items are created when a trade is made.


• There is a spelling mistake in one of the automatically generated news items. See if you can spot it.


• You can't cancel an offer to buy stocks in a prediction if you have sold all your stocks in that prediction.


• Offers that expires are removed one day too late. They can't be accepted, but it does take a day before the player gets the stocks or the money back.


• Double check for enough money to buy stocks is unnecessary. The money are withdrawn immidiately, yet there is an additional check if the player who wants to buy has enough money to buy.


• In Internet Explorer version 6 and older, the boxes on the left and right hand side (main menu items and player info) are covering the main area, thus making some actions difficult and some info unreadable.


• Where you place new offers, the date field on the bottom offer can be difficult (you need to type the date in) to set when the bottom of the browser is so close that when the date field opens you need to scroll down to it.


• On an iPhone, the date field can't be opened.


• On an iPhone, the check box Remember me next time can't be checked if you want to log in.

Most of these errors will be fixed before the official release of version 0.1. Browser-related errors will likely not be fixed, but all the others should be. With so many errors found, do I consider the testing successful? Yes, certainly I do!