To all of you programmers,
As you well know, developing an app from scratch, includes a whole lot
of testing
and bug fixing. Many times, it even is not until the moment you are
attempting to
install (or update) the app, as would the end-user, that you discover
some of the
bugs.
There is a few ways to do this kind of testing. Some developers have
more than one
computer, doing the development on one, test-running on the other. This
could particularly
be of benefit, should you have computers with different flavors of
Windows, or otherwise
differently set up environment. Other developers, decide to have one
version - their
developed and already installed version - running on their computer, and
soon as
it seem to do what they want, push it out the door. Then, they will grab
a cup of
coffee, and await whatever comes for feedback from the end-user. Smile,.
I am not going to tell what approach should be taken, in any given case.
Especially
when your app is a pretty simple project, with a straight forward
installation and
operation, the Quick-Push method may well work. On more complex
projects, perhaps
the stuff may benefit from a bit more in-house testing. At least, it may
save you
some extra hazzle later on.
The good news, is that the screen reader of Window--Eyes, does hold a
feature that
we well may apply here. That is the feature of letting you set up
several independent
user profiles. This is all done from the WE Control Panel, takes only a
few minutes,
and holds many benefits for you as a developer. i have greatly enjoyed
this kind
of multi-user environment, when developing my app projects.
The first benefit you have, is that you can run your developing project
in a secondary
user profile. Should anything go wrong, and your screen reader halts,
you can simply
restart the screen reader, and be back in your main user profile, and do
your normal
work undisturbed by messy coding in your project. Whenever you are ready
to fix your
code, or add new features to your app, you will switch to the developing
user profile,
and can continue your work there.
Secondly, you can have a dedicated user profile, specially set aside for
test-running
your WEPM file, just before you upload it. In this profile, you can
remove oldeter
versions of your app, pretending to be a new user. You can run the WEPM
file on top
of an existing installation, pretending to be an end-user who updates.
And, you can
- upon request - create an environment with a given set of apps
installed, similar
to what a user reports is the case on his computer. Thereby, without
disturbing your
screen reader's main functionality found in the main profile, you can
give your app
a pretty good stress test, and may be able to trace the reason why
things malfunction
on other computers.
Thirdly, you can have a dedicated profile, where you keep the previous
version of
your app code running. If, on a later state, users are reporting some
kind of trouble,
that they claim was not the case with the previous version of your
project, you can
quickly switch to the "old version" profile, and give it all a test.
App developers, why not create a handful profiles, and do more of your
testing in
this kind of an environment. Personally, I like to have at least three
profiles on
my computer, and may name them something like:
MAIN, the profile I run daily, and where only final versions
(downloaded from
app central) runs.
DEVELOPMENT, the profile wherein I do all my projecting and basic
testing.
TEST-USER, the profile where I try to pretend being the first-time
or updating
end-user, and where I do my test running of any WEPM file just prior to
uploading.
As I said, you could have a fourth profile, name it ""Previous", and
keep your previous
version of the code there. Even, if you like, you could have a separate
profile for
each of your projects in development, and thereby easily switch between
the different
profiles, depending on which app you currently want to show some
attention. Benefit
hereof is, that you can work in a "protected" environment, with strict
focus on your
current app, not disturbing yourself with lacking coding of the other
apps you have
in process.
Finally, I want to tell you all, there is available an app from app
central, that
easily let's you switch between all your user profiles in WE. At the
moment, I am
unable to remember the name, but it starts with the letter Z, so should
be no trouble
to find it. Don't let the non-English name scare you. The app is quick
and easy to
set up, and will let you switch profiles with a simple set of hotkeys.
--
David
