The Mobile QA team and Mario Alvarado have been formulating a set of specifications for a beta tester tool extension that can help out our community in really getting a better grasp of testing their Fennec builds and would like to ask our community about any comments/suggestions they may have. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:
- screenshots-taking capabilities
- copy-paste build id
- quickly disable extensions.checkCompatibility without going to about:config
- quickly enable the error console without going to about:config
- determine full build identifier (full 14-digit)
- copy list of extensions to clipboard
- save webpage source code
If anyone has something they’d like to see added, or just want to talk about the ones mentioned above, please feel free to comment on this blog post!
One possible direction for this extension is to have it dump a large amount of information in a single action. It could go to a pastebin-like site or to my email account. The idea is that I can easily sift through the information when I’m back at my desktop, and don’t have to worry about having missed a crucial piece.
The dump could include a screenshot plus everything in about:support (list of extensions, build information, non-privacy-sensitive prefs). For a web page, I’d also want it to include the URL and any relevant error console messages.
The dump probably shouldn’t include the web page source code, though. Web page source code often includes privacy- or security-sensitive information that is not visible in a screenshot. For example, the http://twitter.com/ source code includes your username and an anti-CSRF token if you’re logged in.
What can you do with a “full 14-digit build identifier”? I think I’d rather have a hg rev id, so I can see whether the build included a specific patch.
Let me know when you’ve released the new tool and I’ll add it to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/helpimprovefirefox
Nightly tester tools has all but
screenshot
save source
and maybe the list of extensions
Here’s that sketch from our discussion:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/madhava_work/4578555057/
Incidentally, for now copy/paste may be the mechanism you have to use, but once the sharing infrastructure gets built we should just let people tap and have the things to send be in an email they can address. Or do we just want to have a “send this” button that will submit it? Copy/pasting between apps feels very heavyweight, interaction wise, for a mobile device.