Just writing this because some people think that loading one particular page is a Good Test of what a browser should do. This is more or less what we did when I was the test manager for Macintosh Internet Explorer.
1. Make sure no applications are running.
2. Launch browser, make sure pages are not set to reformat as new images are loaded. Quit browser.
3. Delete all the browser's cached files.
4. Launch the browser.
5. Go to http://www.yahoo.com to bring up the network connection, and wait for page to load.
6. Wait an additional twenty seconds for memory usage to settle.
7. Enter the URL of the site to visit, hit the enter button, start timing.
8. When web page is completely loaded, including all images, stop timing (this is triggered by "Done" in the status bar).
9. Quit browser, and return to step 3.
We tested the 'top 100 sites Mac users visited', a list that Apple provided us. And we ran these tests every night, automatically, when the build was done.
Comments
Nahh, they just make sure that www.microsoft.com works and that www.sun.com doesn't. :)
let's not forget msn now ...
i hate it how, every time i upgrade my macos x msie it resets my home page to msn :(
Heh heh heh, shall I tell you a story?
My last project at Microsoft we had to work with Sun to integrate their Java Virtual Machine into the embedded software we were doing. As you can imagine, it didn't go well. I should have known that the project was in for a rough ride from the start, when we delivered our first technical documents to them--and their lawyers sent it back, saying 'we can't read this proprietary format.' The documents were in Microsoft Word format.
I told them they could download a free Word viewer, and got the gruff response "We are not allowed at Sun to have any Microsoft software on our work PCs." Ah, OK.
What was more incredible was their solution to the problem: "Instead of the proprietary Microsoft Word format, please put the documentation in Adobe Acrobat." Huh?
And no use arguing with them that Acrobat was just as proprietary as Word--they went on and on about Acrobat being an 'accepted industry standard'.
So they got their documentation in good old plaintext.
Hmm, I've had this debate before. ;)
PDF is delivered in a well documented plaintext format, and is very easily convertible to PS. It's cross platform (good non-Adobe tools exist on most platforms to create and manipulate PDFs) and it's not known to carry any nasty viruses. Yes, Adobe holds patents on the PDF format, and no one else can use the term 'Acrobat', but they've been good about keeping the format open (i.e. no deliberate obfuscation or obtuse format changes and extensions).
I think 'proprietary' is a term that should be considered on a scale from 'completely closed and encrypted; we send in the armed police if you attempt to peek in' (it's scary, but software like this really does exist!) to 'fully open; plaintext with an open license'.
On this scale, the MS Word file format is much more proprietary than PDF.
If I were Sun, I wouldn't accept MS Word format either. ;) Check out http://xml.openoffice.org/. Of course, this wasn't available back in IE4 days, but it's a great idea!
Sure--all those points are valid.
But we're not talking about manipulating file formats, all we're talking about is reading some documentation.
Sun was just being a bunch of arrogant confrontational assholes again. I really can't stand them; all the people on their engineering teams were so convinced that They Were The Shit.
In this case, whining that you can't read the documentation, and then having your legal department write a complaint, is really silly.
Had they asked nicely, I might've just put it in Acrobat for them. But they were being Typical Sun Assholes, and they got it in text.
Ahh, point taken. There was no good reason for the Sun employees to be snotty.
There may have been an agreement ahead of time about document interchange of which develepers were not informed. Maybe the Sun employees were insulted by receiving MS Word files when sending them wasn't meant as an insult. Who knows. People get too religious about their software companies. ;)
Yes. But hell, these Sun employees were working on a product based on WindowsCE...
I would've comped them some free MS Office copies if they were nice. But they told me they were not allowed to run Office on any of their PCs... and even their Windows PCs had to be standalone, in a clean room, and not on the Sun corporate network.
The anti-Microsoft paranoia was so great that when we visited (to help them out with their ActivePerl installation on Windows, of all things, which we used for source code control), we were escorted everywhere... even into the bathroom. We joked about that for awhile at work: "Without Sun, you can't shit."
Is that what MS does with IE for the PC as well? :)