01 October, 2009

Interesting Bug in Yahoo Messenger

I have been busy in an internal product training for last 3 days along with my colleague cum mentee Narain Mittal. Today afternoon, product trainer Ravi messaged me on Yahoo Messenger that the training is postponed to 3.30 PM. He requested me to inform Narain as well.

Chat text on my chat window

Ravi: we will have KT at 3:30pm
Pari: sure.

I copied Ravi’s chat message and pasted it onto Narain’s chat window as below:

Chat text on Narain’s chat window

Ravi: we will have KT at 3:30pm
Ravi is typing a message.
Pari: sure.

If you observe the chat text on Narain’s chat window, 'Ravi is typing a message.' is an additional message here. Interestingly, this is not visible in my chat window.

Inference
Additional message is visible only when I copy the chat text from my chat window to narain’s chat window. It looks to me that the text is plain hidden on my chat window. However, explicitly copying the text using Ctrl-C or Copy options will copy the hidden text as well. This happens to another message ‘Last message received on 10/1/2009 at 3:08 PM’ as well. I checked this on Gmail chat and this bug is not prevalent on gmail chat.

Any thoughts on this bug?

Happy Investigating,
Parimala Shankaraiah
http://curioustester.blogspot.com

8 comments:

  1. Hi Pari,
    Good observation! It's a bit amazing that you've noticed such a bug which I believe many people (like me) can easily ignore.
    I think probably they are using some kind of temporary message to view such kind of status and once any new message comes, they only override it, but not remove it completely and thus it is getting copied.
    And as per usability, it doesn't seem a critical one. So we can continue using Yahoo without any fear :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Narain
    And as per usability, it doesn't seem a critical one. So we can continue using Yahoo without any fear :)


    This is a very trivial one for sure. It gives me a HIGH when I find such bugs because we fall into the trap of believing that Google, Yahoo and a lot more brands to be more than perfect and such experiences forces to rethink.

    Happy Testing,
    Parimala Shankaraiah
    http://curioustester.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. "An interesting observation made by Narain was that the message 'Ravi is typing a message.' is copied only if the text is selected between the "

    Is the sentence complete or you missed something?

    Regards,
    Ajay
    http://enjoytesting.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Ajay

    Thanks for pointing out. That was typed incorrectly.

    Happy Testing
    Parimala Shankaraiah
    http://curioustester.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. ~Pari
    "we fall into the trap of believing that Google, Yahoo and a lot more brands to be more than perfect and such experiences forces to rethink"

    Very true. Most of us have a tendency to assume that. But still I believe no software is absolutely "Bug Free", and its just a matter of time how and when these kind of bugs are revealed.
    And these kind of excercises are very interesting ways of learning for freshers like me.

    Regards,
    Narain.

    ReplyDelete
  6. From a developer perspective! :)


    Well, I see that as a feature n not a bug..;) ;)
    Jokes apart, whenever a product is made, the team makes sure the spec are met and the testing happens to test the developed prod wrt the specs.. If the people are creative, (at every stage, soln Mgmt, Developers, Testing guys) they think of extra scenarios and suggest, implement, test them. Now the prod goes out to the customer/mass..

    Its in beta mode.. Everybody is now interested in seeing, if the prod whatever purpose it was developed is met... The feedback is taken, and enhancements made and released..

    As the saying goes " Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder", "bugs lie in the eye of the tester" ;)

    Your scenario seems very rare. For an instant messenger, I consider these are additional (nice to have) features.
    If I consider them as features, these are the scenaris I can think of..

    - Additional text for reporting purpose.. When you copy/paste, it might be that you wanted to know what happened when.. So, info like, last msg recieved will be still useful..

    Additionally, the apps, provide end-user customization.. and many a times the appearance of these items are based on such customization.. Maybe resetting, some setting/ theme/ style cld help..

    Even, if in real-time, someone faces a similar prob, he/she can still go ahead and meet the purpose. All he/she has to do is, get creative... See what are the other options, that cld solve the prob.. To avoid the unnecessary text, a snapshot cld be taken and sent! :D Prob solved..
    If the prob is too generic, and a lot of people face this problem, then you could give the feedback/suggestion to those guys.. Coz, some really care about enhancing based on the user feedback.
    Hope my perspective on the product and the usage of the product in the real-time, do not spoil your's and stop you from idetifying such bugs! :D

    Cheers,
    Netra

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Netra
    As the saying goes " Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder", "bugs lie in the eye of the tester" ;)


    Thanks for providing an indepth insight Netra. I agree that it is a bug and it is a trivial one at that. A corner case. Behaviour that is not going to harm the customer much. Just my views.

    'Bugs lie in the eye of the tester' - I would like to tweak it a bit - 'Good Quality Product is in the eye of the tester'

    Happy Reading,
    Parimala Shankaraiah
    http://curioustester.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hehe...
    I love your passion for testing and quality.. Great going dear! :)

    Lots of love,
    Netra

    ReplyDelete