Myth 22 : A tester testing Globalization features need not pay any special attention towards testing MUI feature.
I had touched up the nuances of Multilingual user interface (MUI) feature in this post as well as this one in the past. These posts primarily focused on how MUI technology is implemented in Windows Operating systems and spoke about the differences in MUI technology in different versions of Windows OS. What these posts did not cover specifically about MUI was- if the software application you are testing supports Multilingual user Interface, then what are the aspects that you can look at from testing perspective to ensure that MUI is tested properly. In my experience, this is an often neglected area of Globalization testing. May be because supporting MUI is one of the basic features and it is often "expected" to be working fine just because few common user cases work. The purpose of this post is to correct this myth and look at the finer details of a typical MUI implementation and the areas the could be generally tested.
MUI at a basic level:
What does it actually mean why you stare at a requirement that says- the application you are testing supports MUI ?
At a very basic level, it means that-
1. In the application under test, the strings are separated from the source code. What does "Strings" include in an application ? Strings may include any text on User Interface (or even sometimes Command Line interface) such as Menu names, Text labels,Control names etc. All these are generally static texts, which are usually the candidates for translation into any given language. These strings are separated from the source code and included in the resource files.
2. The second part- at a higher level, of being an MUI supported application is that the application has the ability (built programatically) to load the separated resource files dynamically at the run time.
So MUI software application is the one which is language neutral, has the translatable strings available separately in the resource files and finally has the ability to load the resource files dynamically.
Lets further look into some questions that might come into mind at this time-
What is the need to separate the strings from the source code ?
If the strings are not separated from the source code, then it will reside in the source code. What that means is- the language experts who translate the strings to the target language wont have access to those strings as they usually get the strings in separate files (called resource files) to carry out the translation. In this situation, when the strings are still in source code- it will result in that text being shown in the base language even when the application is localized. e.g. suppose the application's original language is English and there is a requirement to translate in German. So, the strings residing in source code will not get translated in German and we will have part English and part German text because of some English strings still being "hard-coded".
The second question that might arise is-
What is the need to dynamically load the resource file ?
Few examples here-
- Suppose an application supports 3 languages- English, German and French. If user installs the application on German OS, then at the time of installation, the application should recognize the Germaan OS and load the German resource files. If it does not then the German customer may end up seeing English or French text.
- Suppose the organization has a support group in Germany and they deal with English customers. The German support engineer might prefer the User interface to be in German and as he is dealing with English customer, there may be a need for him to switch between German and English User interfaces. This is where dynamically loading the resources and hence, the MUI features comes in real handy.
What are the questions i should ask before testing MUI feature ?
Asking questions helps! and it does always help to ask quite a lot before testing and of course, while testing. Some questions below might help understanding the scope of MUI testing-
- Is the Installer of my application support MUI i.e. does the application Installer installs different supported languages' resource files as a part of Installation ? i.e. if product supports English, German and French languages- does the respective resource files gets into the system during installation ?
- Does the installer recognize the OS locale settings and installs appropriate resources files as per locale settings ?
- Does the application installer provides an option to select the language before proceeding with Installation ?
- Is the Fallback logic implemented ? i.e. say if supported language is German and the application is installed on Dutch OS, does the application falls back to a common language say English ?
- After the application is installed, does it provide the option to the user to switch language at a run time ? i.e.
- If the computer has 2 users with different languages (its possible in Windows OS!) i.e. say English and German and the user logs on to German user settings, does the application desplays the German UI ? This should be taken care of by the application's dynamic resource loading logic.
- If the application happens to be a web application, then too all the above questions will hold good. One additional question to ask, though can be- What is user's browser language ? This is a typical case- when OS language is different from the browser language. In this case, what is the fallback logic ? How should it behave ? It can become more complex say in a situation when the web application runs on French OS with French Canadian browser settings and at the application logon page, the user selects English language as his preferred language. In this case, what language should be shown to the user ?
- How does the MUi logic works in Mac, Linux, Firefox, Mozilla etc. ? Are there any implementation differences that i need to be aware of ?
These questions (and may be more) can help clarify MUI requirement in detail and accordingly testing strategy can be formed. Asking questions is required because Test engineers may never get the requirements in as much detail as might be required for them to test effectively.
Why is testing MUI feature important ?
For an International application, MUI is one of the key features. It is a feature that has helped Microsoft add the required scalability to scale their products across the world. The reason i used Microsoft's example here is because probably Microsoft is the most Global software organization in the entire world. Consider this- Windows 98 supported 30 languages, Windows XP supported 42 languages and Windows Vista- a whopping 97 languages. One of the prime reasons, Microsoft has been able to scale up so much in Windows Vista is because of advancement in MUI technology during the Vista release and this technology is further used in Windows 7 too. So, for an application to be truly global, it has to have a core global arhitecture in place which is what MUI helps achieve.
What are typical Test ideas of Testing MUI feature in the application ?
At the core level, testing MUI means-
- Testing for Language neutral core binary
- Testing for single MUI Installation
- Testing for switching language without Reinstallation
- Testing for the logic of dynamically loading resources
- Testing for language Fallback mechanism
- Testing for Single base binary
Depending upon the answer to the questions asked in the section above, the right testing strategy can be formed.
I think with this information, i will be good to continue the discussion further on what parts of MUI can be specifically tested in your applications.
Please do share your ideas!
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