Hello swisscheese:
Thanks for a the interesting question. I'm always happy to try out new
software.
A little on my background first, so you know how to take my input...
I have 18 years in the software business, mostly non-programming. I
have been a QA manager, a business analyst, a Chief Technology/Web
Officer, among other roles. My only exposure to engineering was when I
worked for an engineering web-portal. I have a degree in Mathematics.
My system is Pentium III, Windows 98, 128 MB RAM
My Experiences with emachineshop
*********************************
* The download from your site went well. However, your download page
(http://www.emachineshop.com/download/index.htm) did not tell me I'd
be downloading a small program to download the larger program, so I
was expecting a 3.4 MB file when I clicked on the download link.
Confusing!
* When I first launched this program, I got a dialog that said it was
going to check out my video card. When I got the circles, diamonds,
etc., I was unable to drag a shape using the left mouse button. But,
I'm pretty sure my video card is just fine. I decided to continue on
to the application.
* When I continued, I got a dialog saying I should review some help
files before continuing. I clicked on both links and was shown the
appropriate files. When I clicked on the OK button, the program
"stalled" for a long time and when I switched windows and back again,
the workspace in the program did not refresh. Then I got a small
dialog with "wglMakeCurrent:2000" in it. And THEN the workspace
refreshed to the graph paper.
* In fact, every time I subsequently windowed back to the application,
it took an long time to refresh the workspace - sometimes a half
second, sometime many seconds, sometimes not at all until I drew a
rectangle to force it to refresh.
* Since using the workspace was working so intermittently for me, I
decided to leave that and look at the menus.
* Tried File/Open...Confused by the boxed X in the preview pane when
no document chosen. Why not blank? As well, in "Files of Type"
dropdown you only have one choice. If there's only one choice, that's
no choice. Remove dropdown. Clicked "Cancel" button and dialog didn't
go away???
* Ditto for File/Save As... on the "Files of Type" and "Cancel".
* In fact, none of your close actions on dialogs seem to be working.
When I was in File/Print and click on Help then used upper-right close
box, the dialog didn't go away until after I had gone to another
window and back. This could all be tied up in the previously reported
refresh problem.
* At this point, I thought I'd try drawing something, so I went to
your online demo page. It wasn;t obvious how to select a material, but
I found it under Job menu. You should probably make it more explicit.
* Selected part material (again with refresh problem). You should
probably have the column at the leftmost highlight after selection as
opposed to the second column.
* Drew a few concentric circles like in picture, then drew one "by
mistake" away from common center. Tried to select this bad circle
using select tool, but could not select any of them this way.
Basically, without a way of selecting mistakes, it was impossible to
draw anything worthwhile.
At this point, I'd be happy to continue with some more testing.
However, I'll need some direction from you first about:
* are the bugs that I'm encountering ones you've seen from others?
* given what is *not* working for me, what areas should I concentrate
on?
Keep in mind that thoroughly testing an entire application like this
would take a very large amount of time and cost.
Thanks!
websearcher-ga
Search Strategy:
None - since this is a testing situation. |
Clarification of Answer by
websearcher-ga
on
02 Feb 2003 09:26 PST
Hi swisscheese:
I have spent some more time looking at your menus. While an
*exhaustive testing of all the menu items would take hours and hours,
I was able to find the following problems fairly quickly.
* Many of your menu items have icons to their left, but there are no
matching icons (that I can find or bring up) in the interface (on
rulers, toolbars, etc.). For example, Save As, Import, Exit, etc. If
you can't access it a function via an icon, don't put the icon in the
menu. [You also have the same problem with putting these icons in your
dialog boxes. If they don't have an toolbar equivalent, leave them
out.]
* If you go to the Print dialog, Margins tab and enter "12" in Upper
margin, you get funny lines *below* the page picture. There should be
some sort of error message instead, stating that your margins are too
large for the page.
* When I clicked Preview from Print, I got the preview window, but my
cursor icon didn't change to a pointer - stayed on a clock forever.
(Mind you, the clock still worked as a pointer...)
* In Preferences dialog, 2D tab, "radius" and "diameter" should be
capitalized, to be consistent.
* In Job Menu, "Settings" item should be "Settings..."
* In Job menu, Checklist item, "Lines positions" should read "Line
positions".
I must say, however, that your product looks really cool. If I were an
engineer, I'd be all over it. :-)
Let me know when you have a new version with the Win98 bugs fixed.
websearcher-ga
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