Better Software - March 2009 - (Page 20) Test Connection Off the Trails by Michael Bolton It was a busy conference, with testers milling about the hotel hallways, moving from session to session. It was also a tester’s dream come true, for there, at the top of the hallway, were two computers—Windows- and Internet Explorer-based information kiosks, each with its own screen, mouse, and full keyboard. This was like candy for a pair of enthusiastic testers like James Bach and me. We began by surveying the systems. Apparently we had very limited rights to do anything other than to operate the browser. Default Windows programs like Accessories were unavailable. Internet Explorer’s File/Close menu option was grayed out. Control-Alt-Delete brought up a message saying that the Task Manager was disabled due to an administration policy. We observed that the service provider had prevented access to most of the Internet—the only sites accessible were those associated with the hotel itself, the chain to which it belonged, and some of the major airlines. Conference participants had to walk past the kiosks to get to the presentation rooms. During the breaks, a small crowd would gather around the machines as we tested, and people would eagerly shout suggestions as to what to try next. It was fun, and the audience had some great ideas: “Where else can you go? Try clicking that link! Try right clicking! Have you tried to open a command window? What if you put CMD. EXE in the address line?” Most of our discoveries were about activities that we were prevented from doing, but we learned some other things, too. At one point, I noticed that the times on the two displays were different. “These browsers are running on different boxes,” I said. “Are you sure? How do you know?” James asked. “If they were running on the same machine, they’d show the same time,” I replied. “True,” James said. “Did you notice that until now we hadn’t really consid20 BETTER SOFTWARE MARCH 2009 ered the question of whether they were running on the same machine or different ones?” A good point; the box is especially black when you can’t see the box at all. I had to give a presentation, so I reluctantly left my self-appointed testing assignment. I returned an hour later, and as I approached the kiosks, James was grinning. “Check this out,” he said. “Put your hands on either side of the keyboard— nowhere in particular—and spread out your fingers. Now, just flap your hands lightly on the keys, as though you were playing the congas, but not hard.” I did. To my astonishment, after a few drumbeats, the image on the screen seemed to rotate counterclockwise ninety degrees. The browser was suddenly sideways. Wha…? “That’s how I found it. It took me a minute to figure out why it’s happening,” said James. “You try.” I looked at my hands. The left was over Shift, Alt, Ctrl, Caps Lock, Tab, A, and Z. The right covered Ctrl, Shift, Alt, the Windows key, and the cursor navigation keys. I tried pressing Tab, which www.StickyMinds.com didn’t seem to have an effect. The cursor keys—up, down, left, right? Nope. Ctrl with those keys? No. Alt with those keys? No. Combinations? Ctrl-Alt-Down? Yes. When I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Down, the display suddenly flipped upside down. CtrlAlt-Left rotated the image such that the top was on the left, Ctrl-Alt-Right put the top on the right, and Ctrl-Alt-Up set the screen right-side up. For a few moments we amused ourselves by showing the effect to the other testers. Then I began to wonder what might happen if we changed strategy and toured the keyboard systematically. The Windows key brings up the Start menu, but in combination with other keys, it provides a little-known set of shortcuts. By default, Windows-A doesn’t seem to do anything. Windows-B brings up the taskbar—think WindowsBar. Windows C doesn’t do anything. Windows-D minimizes the applications on the screen to expose the Desktop. Windows-E brings up Explorer. Windows-F presents the Windows Find (Search) feature. At the kiosk, I walked through the alphabet from Windows-A, ISTOCKPHOTO http://www.StickyMinds.com
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