Quotes and Placeholders are important pieces of the test writer toolbox, so chances are you will encounter them at some point. Here are some guidelines on how to apply the quote rule to various situations. Keep in mind this list doesn’t include every situation possible, but should provide enough context for you to apply this logic to most situations you find yourself in.
Examples of when to say YES:
Answer yes if all relevant aspects of the quoted text match what you see on the page, and placeholders are used correctly. For example:
- The instructions say Look for the "log in" button and the button says LOG IN → remember that capitalization differences should not be reported or mentioned with Suggest Improvement.
- The instructions ask Do you see a message that says "_ Users Online"? and you see the message "37 Users Online" → answer YES and remember that it’s okay for customers to use _ placeholders within quotes
- The instructions tell you to Enter "123456789" into the online form and the number automatically formats to 123-456-789 after you enter it → remember that common, automatic formatting doesn’t need to be reported
- The instructions tell you to Enter "08/15/2018" into the online form and the field is already formatted as / / (i.e. dashes are already included) → remember that common, automatic formatting doesn’t need to be reported and you just need to enter the numbers in each section. This may also apply to separation using spaces.
- The instructions ask Click the "Create" button but you see a button that has Create with a symbol next to it (e.g. +Create) → even though there is other content around “Create”, in this case a + symbol, the quoted text is a match.
- The instructions say Are you brought to a new test page with the title "Unnamed Test"? but the page says #47211 Unnamed Test → even though there is other content around “Unnamed Test”, in this case both numbers and symbols, the quoted text is a match.
- The instructions specifically say they will use a symbol other than _ as a placeholder, eg. We will be using [ ] as a placeholder during this test.
Answer yes if the client uses a different kind of placeholder other than _ but it’s clear from their instructions which is supposed to be the placeholder. For example:
- The instructions ask you to Look for X, where X is number of students → It is obvious that X is a placeholder for a number, as it is clearly spelled out by the test author.
- The instructions say, Do you see a green alert box which appears with the message You have successfully inactivated “<#> items”? , where <#> is the number of assets selected?
Examples of when to say NO:
Say no if you see any difference in spelling, words, or punctuation of the text or values contained within the quotes.
Say no if the instructions use a symbol other than _ as a placeholder and they don’t explain and/or it’s not obvious from instructions that some other symbol or character is supposed to act as placeholder.
Say no if you see any difference in spelling, words, or punctuation within the quotes. For example…
- The instructions say Click the "Run tests!" button, but the button says Run test without the second s or !
- The instructions ask Do you see a "Log In" button?, but the button says login as one word
- You enter a value into a field, but the value is transformed to a different value after you enter it (e.g. you are asked to enter or match“$327” (dollar value) but it turns into “£327” (pound sterling).
- The instructions say Do you see a message that says something like "Welcome to this page!" when you click the URL? but the message in the app says Welcome to our page!The message in the app says our instead of this, so you must report this with No - even though the customer used a term like something like, they still used quotes and an exact match must be made.
- The instructions say Look for "email@rainforestqa.com" on the screen, but on the screen you see the truncated text “email@rainf…” AND there is no full email or text in a tooltip if you hover. Note: If you hover above the email and you do see a tooltip with the full email address, you shouldn’t fail the step.
- The instructions don’t warn you that they will use a symbol other than _ as a placeholder (e.g. [x]), or explain it, but do anyway. For example, Do you see [x] students online? → If the rest of the instructions don’t clearly explain [x] is going to be the placeholder, you should fail the step.
- The instructions ask Do you see the words "Green: Apple" on the page? but the words are located in completely different parts of a page, table, spreadsheet, etc → the test author shouldn’t be using quotes for words that are so far away or in separate defined spaces (e.g. two different columns or cells in spreadsheet).