As a Clockworker, I'm consistently looking for ways to become a better tester, improve my programming skill set and find ways to do my job more efficiently. While life as a software tester at Clockwork is full of challenges and surprises, I found a particular part of my responsibilities tedious: Test Plan Entry.

Prior to launching the testing phase of a project, we enter test plans into TestLink, an open-source project. TestLink allows us to track test plan execution, and for the most part, it works well. However, entering test cases manually into TestLink can be time consuming.

A self-challenge was established: Find a way to speed up test plan entry, and level up my novice programming skills.

Think about how people usually approach analytics. Either they segment data, looking for clues and connecting dots, or they develop key performance indicators (KPIs) in advance and react to what it spits out. Each of these have drawbacks.

Want to email your up-to-day to-do list easily? We've got the how-to guide here!

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a common way to initiate a web project. The idea is that all of the basic information can be presented in advance to solution providers and the resulting proposals can be evaluated by some objective criteria. Unfortunately, this process is deeply flawed and often leads decision makers away from good decisions.

Here's our advice for writing an RFP. 

Starting late last night and continuing into this morning, we were notified of errors some of our clients' sites; users were getting a "Transaction has been declined" message.

Here's how we took care of it.

This post requires a quick introductory disclaimer: I've got a pretty negative opinion of Flash. It's been the cause of too many browser crashes and computer slowdowns for me to be much of a fan. I've supported Apple's stance on Flash support for their mobile devices because it's saved me from having similarly awful experiences on my phone. Another perk: Apple's firm "no-Flash for mobile" stance has forced web professionals to look beyond Flash for other ways to animate experiences online. Some awesome possibilities have arisen that not only treat browsers nicely, but are (for the most part) cross-platform and mobile-friendly.

If you've ever had someone gain unauthorized access to your online accounts, you know how frustrating it is. Not only do you have to reset your password for that account, you also have to reset all the other accounts that use the same password (even though you've been told a million times not to do that).

On March 26th, Clockwork will be hosting PyStar, a workshop by the Twin Cities Python user group designed to teach women how to program in a friendly non-alpha geek environment. Using Python, of course!

My dearest IE,

Yo, dude.

Dear Internet Explorer,

Over the last eleven years our relationship has been, well, rocky. IE6 has caused daily problems, requiring extra style sheets and conditional content to handle its idiosyncratic, disgraceful ungraceful rendering of code. IE7 and IE8 — while steps in the right direction — didn't heal the damage IE6 had already done.  

Today, as I installed IE9 to test our clients' existing sites, I was wary.

A significant new development in interactive arrived this year with the iPhone 4 Retina Display. On-screen images are as sharp as a printed magazine which presents a challenge for web designers: if a site has been designed and developed on a standard resolution monitor, how can you make sure it won't become blurry when scaled up for these new print-resolution screens?