The WebQA team isn’t always the first group that people think of when they think of Mozilla. However, this team makes many Mozilla web properties possible. We work on everything from Add-ons, to the Mozillians phonebook, to web engagement projects like Browserquest. The team does everything from the ground up, from manual testing to automation using Selenium WebDriver. We rely on our contributors to help us keep up the good work. This month we’d like to give a special round of thanks to Leah Klearman, better known to us as klrmn!
Klrmn found out about our team by chance, reading a post on Slashdot about Mozilla. Thankfully she took us up on the offer when we were soliciting volunteers. For the past four months klrmn has been one of the most prolific contributors to projects across WebQA! She helps write, maintain, and re-factor automated tests for Mozilla-related websites. Klrmn does QA and Test Automation professionally, which meant that she could jump right in. While it’s nice to have contributors who come pre-loaded with experience, it’s not a must-have! What we really need are people who are motivated to learn and contribute more than anything else.
Contributing to Mozilla WebQA let’s you build up your Github skills. Almost all of our projects are Open Source, and by helping us out you’ll be building up your portfolio of comments and checkins! Another perk is networking with other Mozillians. In her time helping us out, klrmn has gained the respect of the whole WebQA team.
“Leah is a great example of who we (Mozilla) envision when we talk about ‘Community’: the willingness to dive in, ask meaningful questions about how and why things are done the way they are (with suggestions on how to improve them), and, in general, teach us more than a thing or two about some automation best-practices. In addition to participating in an in-person testday, she took a Selenium RC -> WebDriver conversion single-handedly, and has both made and merged many pulls requests across a variety of our projects, improved documentation to help other contributors get up-to-speed, across projects. The symbiosis is most welcome: as with all contributors, we consider her a vital part of our team!” – Stephen Donner, Mozilla WebQA Manager, IRC: stephend
“Leah has been expanding her scope and is looking for all of the other things that could do with a little work. She has even started contributing to the assertion framework we use (unittest-zero). Her continued help as a contributor will always be appreciated!” – David Burns, Mozilla Lead Software Engineer in Test, IRC: AutomatedTester
Klrmn is from the SF Bay Area. We were thrilled to meet her in person at the SF office when we did a MeetUp in February this year. I asked her what she enjoyed outside of automation:
“For someone who owns two motorcycles and has spent hours learning to fly my body in a vertical wind tunnel, I sure do spend an awful lot of time reading.”
I asked klrmn what she’d tell someone considering getting involved. She said:
“Use the opportunity to learn something new, rather than sticking with things that are already in your comfort zone. Mozillians are great mentors =). For instance, in the Open Source world, it is perfectly acceptable to not just find the bugs but also submit fixes for them.”
There is a lot more to Mozilla WebQA than meets the eye. The range of projects that klrmn has worked on includes: SUMO, Addons, Marketplace, Flightdeck, QMO, and some related projects, pytest-mozwebqa and unittestzero. In the future she hopes to also learn how the Firefox QA team does automation. There’s room for anyone who wants to learn and participate in all of these projects!
A big hearty “Thanks!” to klrmn from the WebQA team for your past and future contributions to all of our Mozilla projects!
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