title: How to do black box testing?
body: <p>Opposed to white-box / API testing, which is covered <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/990568/how-to-test-an-api">here</a></p>
  
  <p>There are many interviews, both for developers and qa, where you are asked to test smth out. A classic is to <strong>test the save dialog from notepad</strong>. </p>
  
  <p>Here is a list of tests I can come up with, categorized and prioritized: </p>
  
  <p>[functional, high] - dialog performs its use cases - comes up when the user does a "save as", the buttons on the left work, the file is saved with the given name and encoding, top buttons work, cancel button works.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[functional, medium] - save to a Read Only medium - does a fair error pop up?</p>
  
  <p>[functional, medium] - save an empty file</p>
  
  <p>[functional, low] - save a file as .txt but delete the extension from the name</p>
  
  <p>[functional, high] - make sure the dialog is modal</p>
  
  <p>[functional, high] - make sure the dir navigation &amp; dir features work</p>
  
  <p>[functional, high] - context menu options work</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[load, low] - navigate to a directory where there are a very large (aproaching the system limit) number of .txt files; save the file there</p>
  
  <p>[load, low] - navigate to a directory with a large number of sub-directories. save the file there.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[stress, low] - navigate to a directory with a maximum number of files allowed and try to save the file</p>
  
  <p>[stress, low] - saturate the system with file handles (to simulate apps that have very rich interfaces or handle leaks, like Yahoo Messenger); does the dialog pop ?</p>
  
  <p>[stress, medium] - try to save a files when there isn't space on the disk.</p>
  
  <p>[stress, low] - check how deep the "navigate to last folder" button goes with this</p>
  
  <p>[stress, low] - navigate to a directory with a very large number of directories</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[performance, low] - measure the time needed to display the dialog </p>
  
  <p>[performance, low] - measure the resources used by the dialog (memory, window handles, I/O); make sure the resources are dealocated</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[accessibility, high] - is the dialog compatible with the accesability tools win provides? (magnifier, narrator); for example that the menu items scale well when choosing large fonts</p>
  
  <p>[accessibility &amp; compatibility, medium] - is the dialog compatible with famous 3rd party programs that provide accessibility features?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[localization, high] - the dialog works on other locales</p>
  
  <p>[localization, high] - random inputs of UTF-8 and ANSII letters as the file name</p>
  
  <p>[localization, medium] - right to left locales</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[compatibility] - make sure that the file saved can be opened by other editing tools, no matter what the encoding is</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>[usability, high] - user is asked if he is sure he wants to overwrite a file</p>
  
  <p>Can you add some more? Or comment on these ones?</p>