What is a Metro application?

Recently Microsoft has introduced a new design language called ‘Metro’ that comes along with the ‘Windows8 OS’.

Microsoft’s description of the metro language: “METRO is our design language. We call it metro because it’s modern and clean. It’s fast and in motion. It’s about content and typography. And it’s entirely authentic”.

“Metro style apps are full screen apps tailored to your users’ needs, tailored to the device they run on, tailored for touch interaction, and tailored to the Windows user interface. Windows helps you interact with your users, and your users interact with your app.” Continue reading »

Thanks to the advancement in the mobile technology and the availability of vast array of mobile apps, mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily life. Accessing internet and executing critical errands with help of mobile apps like that of mobile banking are on the raise; so are their risk of exposure to threats. In such scenarios, testing mobile applications copiously becomes imperative.

While the organisations are working towards meeting the increasing demands and expectations of the end users for an exceptional UI with fast performance, they also have to make sure that their application complies with the recommended standards and guidelines; hence, making it safe. Thus, an organisation requires a mobile testing process that ensures optimum performance and security of the mobile app. But if you find testing mobile applications a headache or you just simply want to concentrate on development part alone, you have the option of outsourcing your mobile app testing to companies that provide such services.

So, how to test mobile applications? Testing of mobile applications is done in the following two ways:

1. Using mobile emulators
2. Using real devices

Continue reading »

Being a Security Tester, I have one of the most teasing and innovative jobs in my profession. We, testers, are asked to identify as many major security vulnerabilities in the application, given limited time and resources. We have the constraint to explore the application in lesser time than the developers who build the application. We have to discover all the vulnerabilities present in the application, while the hacker conveniently has all the time and resources to do that. Well, that’s what makes this job interesting and challenging.

As SQL injection continues to be the dominant technique for data fraud, I would like to dedicate this blog to the topic in an effort to eliminate this problem. Let’s get started on the basics of how to identify an injection. Continue reading »

Many new applications are emerging out in the market on one-side and new security threats emerging on the other side. Earlier, product owners were not serious about their application security and they did not give much importance to security testing, since hackers were few in existence. However, now-a-days a large number of people have started hacking for fun, money and popularity. They either gain access to confidential information or inject malicious code to crash the system. Now, product owners have begun to understand the importance and criticality of application security and they want their products to be secure.

Testing the application’s security manually is possible but becomes a mammoth task. Well, the right tools should help a tester progress with detecting the security threats in the application. That leads us to the question: “What’s the mantra/right tool for detecting your security threats?” Well, the answer lies in the question itself. It’s the ‘MANTRA” browser. Mantra is an excellent browser-based framework for security testing. Continue reading »

Do you estimate Testing effort as X% of Coding effort?

Scene 1:

The customer has provided adequate documentation on the requirements for the software to be developed and now requests for a quote. Pre-sales consultants, with a developer background, spend just enough time in analyzing the requirements and have discussions with the developers/architects/project managers on how much effort it would take for the development (analysis, design, coding, project management) in the specific architecture/technology. They would go through a series of refinements with various stakeholders before it is being projected to the customer. However, when it comes to the point of estimating the testing effort, the oft-heard response is: “Oh! Don’t you worry; it is just x% of the coding effort. That has worked for us…..”

Well, that’s a scene I have witnessed many a times.

Now, let’s cut to Scene 2: Continue reading »