The wonderful program of the Google Summer of Code is nearing to a close. And it’s time the student participants finish their last bit of coding. The ultimate aim of this program is to encourage more people to venture into world of Open Source. So am I inspired?
After 3 months since the coding began, I have done some work. Though effectively I could complete 50% of it. But there were factors not in favour of me. But I really relish this time, and I definitely would take forward and contribute.
The aim was to write automated tests to test the fennec front end, mainly the Preferences, Awesome bar, Zooming/Panning and Download Manager. I started on the preferences, which was broken into 4 main tests – basic, checking on/off states, text and colors, and the core functionality. Since being the easiest of the lot, I assumed it would take less time. It was not to be. I submitted the first patch for the basic testing, which got landed pretty soon. Then there was a long period were I had times when I scratched my head wondering what to do next. At times the tests simply timed out, which was simply frustrating. The mobile had landed the e10s, which kind of messed up with the fennec build. And so there was a lull, unable to test what I have written. Finally things began to change for the better, I started working and testing. I submitted all the patches for the Preferences test, of which one landed. Few problems still persist, but I am confident that these would be sorted out.
Then jmaher suggested I start with zooming/panning test. I thought this to be the toughest of the lot. But I began to understand ( I had a bit of the testing in the preferences tests, so there ). And soon I had written the full test in a very short time. But the problem with this test was the use of timeouts, that which simply waits for certain amount of time, to wait for the zooming or panning of pages. Instead it was desired that I wait for events to occur, events that notify whether the zooming has ended or panning has stopped ( the extra problem with panning was the kinetic scrolling, which made it hard to predict, theyby cannot wait for the mouseup event ). So this patch cannot be landed without necessary changes.
I also written a small test to check for favicon visiblity and also the display of title in the awesomebar. But after the e10s were landed, there seemed to be problems with awesomebar, at times the autocompletepopup after focussing on the awesomebar won’t finish loading. And this became the stumbling block for the main awesomebar tests, and I made no further progress in the test.
As for download manager, well it is the toughest of the lot for me. The code behind the download manager was hard to comprehend, and even after a week pondering over it, I managed no result. Now though I have a pretty good idea of how to conduct the test, but it won’t make it before the firm “pencils down” date, so you will see me posting about this test in this blog. 🙂
So, am Inspired? Inspired!? That’s an understatement actually. I’m fired up! Well you can say that because Mozilla invited me to the awesome Mozilla Summit 2010. But the real joy was the project itself. The kind of work that was involved, designing, writing code, testing and deploying. These were the words that popped up so many times during my software engineering classes with me making little sense of them. Now after this, I realize how important these terms are. Technically I learnt more of javascript, and also a bit of python and how they use them. And to be in the middle of a great product on the rise is an awesome experience. It’s fun being a member of the Mozilla Community, and I love to contribute more for the benefit of the people of the World. Thank you Google for giving me this great opportunity to be a part of a wonderful open source organisation.
Browser-chrome tests on the Fennec front end – Summary
The wonderful program of the Google Summer of Code is nearing to a close. And it’s time the student participants finish their last bit of coding. The ultimate aim of this program is to encourage more people to venture into world of Open Source. So am I inspired?
After 3 months since the coding began, I have done some work. Though effectively I could complete 50% of it. But there were factors not in favour of me. But I relish these 3 months and I definitely would look forward to contribute much, much more.
The aim was to write automated tests to test the fennec front end, mainly the Preferences, Awesome bar, Zooming/Panning and Download Manager. I started on the preferences, which was broken into 4 main tests – basic, checking on/off states, text and colors, and the core functionality. Since being the easiest of the lot, I assumed it would take less time. It was not to be. I submitted the first patch for the basic testing, which got landed pretty soon. Then there was a long period were I had times when I scratched my head wondering what to do next. At times the tests simply timed out, which was simply frustrating. The mobile had landed the e10s, which kind of messed up with the fennec build. And so there was a lull, unable to test what I have written. Finally things began to change for the better, I started working and testing. I submitted all the patches for the Preferences test, of which one landed. Few problems still persist, but I am confident that these would be sorted out.
Then jmaher suggested I start with zooming/panning test. I thought this to be the toughest of the lot. But I began to understand ( I had a bit of the testing in the preferences tests, so there ). And soon I had written the full test in a very short time. But the problem with this test was the use of timeouts, that which simply waits for certain amount of time, to wait for the zooming or panning of pages. Instead it was desired that I wait for events to occur, events that notify whether the zooming has ended or panning has stopped ( the extra problem with panning was the kinetic scrolling, which made it hard to predict, theyby cannot wait for the mouseup event ). So this patch cannot be landed without necessary changes.
I also written a small test to check for favicon visiblity and also the display of title in the awesomebar. But after the e10s were landed, there seemed to be problems with awesomebar, at times the autocompletepopup after focussing on the awesomebar won’t finish loading. And this became the stumbling block for the main awesomebar tests, and I made no further progress in the test.
As for download manager, well it is the toughest of the lot for me. The code behind the download manager was hard to comprehend, and even after a week pondering over it, I managed no result. Now though I have a pretty good idea of how to conduct the test, but it won’t make it before the firm “pencils down” date, so you will see me posting about this test in this blog. 🙂
So, am Inspired? Inspired!? That’s an understatement actually. I’m fired up! Well you can say that because Mozilla invited me to the awesome Mozilla Summit 2010. But the real joy was the project itself. The kind of work that was involved, designing, writing code, testing and deploying. These were the words that popped up so many times during my software engineering classes with me making little sense of them. Now after this, I realize how important these terms are. Technically I learnt more of javascript, and also a bit of python and how they use them. And to be in the middle of a great product on the rise is an awesome experience. It’s fun being a member of the Mozilla Community, and I love to contribute more for the benefit of the people of the World. Thank you Google for giving me this great opportunity to be a part of a wonderful open source organisation.
Ashes of fire 