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Beta testing Guide for Version 3.1 (Chem4Word 2020)

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Mike Williams edited this page Apr 17, 2020 · 7 revisions

Introduction

Thank you for agreeing to test the latest release of Chem4Word. We appreciate your effort and time spent in helping us to improve the quality of our product.

Beta-testing and alpha-testing - what's the difference?

When we develop software we test in-house before anything else. We identify and fix obvious bugs we find. We hope to catch as many as we can before we ship the software. This is generally called alpha-testing.

Beta-testing allows you, the customer, to validate our product and to help us to improve it. We want to find out how it performs in a real environment. This reduces the risk of failure and allows the customer to have a say in shaping the final product.

There will initially be five beta-testing phases running for a minimum of 4 weeks each, commencing on

  • 20th Jan 2020
  • 20th Feb 2020
  • 20th March 2020
  • 20th April 2020
  • 20th May 2020

During each phase, there may be more than one version of the software released. Please ensure that you update when the system says there are updates available!

Code of Practice

By agreeing to beta-test Chem4Word, you must also agree to the following:

  • Report bugs and issues in a timely and consistent fashion (details on how to do this are given below)
  • Report bugs/issues using the only channels provided (see below)
  • Not to distribute beta versions of the software, or links to the download area for the beta version, unless specifically instructed to do so by the project team.
  • Abide by the Code of Conduct. An initial violation will generate an emailed warning from the project lead. Repeated violations of the Code will result in removal from the testing programme.

Bugs versus Feature Requests

First, let's clarify what the difference is:

  • A bug is a problem that causes Chem4Word to deviate from its designed behaviour. This could be an application crash or an unexpected result from getting it to perform a task. Both are undesirable. But in a major new release of a sophisticated package, bugs are unavoidable.
  • A feature request arises when the application functions as the designers, but not the user, expects it to. It could be a problem with user-interface organisation. Or perhaps an assumption made by the developers that degrades the quality of the product in some way. You might also think of ways the software could be improved.

We want you to report both of these problems when you come across them.

What We Need You to Test

We would like you to use Chem4Word as you currently do. However, we would like you to focus on the following functional features:

  • Interactive and static (document-based) rendering of chemical structures
  • Viewing and editing labels of embedded chemical structures
  • Viewing and importing structures from the Library
  • Using the new ACME editor to create and amend chemical structures. This last point is crucial. ACME is now our preferred tool for sketching. It is also the most complicated component of Chem4Word. If there are going to be bugs, then most probably they are going to be in ACME. We want to identify and correct as many problems with this as we can. So please set up your installation to use this instead of ChemDoodle for Web. The instructions are in the user manual: as you have no doubt already used Chem4Word previously, it will default to ChemDoodle for Web, and you will need to change this setting through the Options dialogue.

Make sure that the Editor option on the Plug-Ins tab is set to ACME Structure Editor: image

This is what ACME looks like in action: image

Getting Started

This is what you need to do:

  1. Download Chem4Word beta from the releases page
  2. Install it on a fresh machine if at all possible. If you cannot do this, then you will need to upgrade Chem4Word V3 to v 2020 (V3.1). Uninstall is only required if you wish to revert to V3 of the Add-in.
  3. Read the bundled User Manual! This will show you how Chem4Word has changed from the old version. And it will save you a lot of wasted time!
  4. Configure your installation to use ACME through the Options dialogue.
  5. Start to use the new version of Chem4Word as you normally would.
  6. Report any bugs you find as described below.

Reporting a Bug

We cannot fix bugs unless we can reproduce them. To do this, you will need to help us:

  1. Check the issues list first to see whether or not your bug has been reported. This could save you and us both time and effort. Just leave a comment such as "I have seen this too" will give us an indication of how severe the bug is, but any further reproduction steps will also help.
  2. Open a bug report by clicking here.
  3. Enter a brief title for the bug, such as 'Chain drawing terminates abruptly' or 'Bond stereo does not update'. Just something to help us to identify the nature of the bug.
  4. Write down the steps you took to trigger the bug as a numbered list in the description section. If you're familiar with Markdown, then please feel free to use this to format your steps. The bug report template lists compiling instructions. Please follow these.
  5. Please include your system details, which can be obtained from the menu item Help -> System Info
  6. Include the final error report or a screenshot of the wrong result:
  • If the bug triggers an error message, then use [Ctrl]-C to copy the dialogue's text to the screen. Paste it into the text of the description.
  • If the bug does not trigger an error message, and you have a screen grabber such as Greenshot, then simply paste the screenshot into the Description after the steps you have outlined. If you don't have Greenshot which is free to use then download and install it.
  • Please include your System Information from "Help" --> "System Info" in the Chem4Word Ribbon.
  • Save the bug report. We will deal with it as quickly as we can, although this might not be immediate.

Reporting a Feature Request

  1. Click on this link.
  2. Follow the instructions in the 'Write' tab.
  3. Save the feature request.

Thank you. And Happy Testing! On behalf of the Chem4Word Project team.

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