Hi BCG writers,

There doesn't seem to be a forum that covers this situation, so I hope that posting this here does not cause offence.

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Email me if you are willing to be a QA tester: toolkit2020 at datahighways.co.uk

I have spent much of the last 6 months of lockdown working on an improved version of my Scriptwriters' Toolkit. Well I completed a useful first phase and I 'launched' it last Friday, by altering my Website and emailing existing users of the earlier version of the Toolkit.

The improvement process involved not only the improvement to the Microsoft Word templates that form the toolkit, but also videos showing how to install the toolkit and also changes to the website so that payment of the small Admin fee and download of the Toolkit can all take place automatically.

Nothing is ever perfect so I am looking for persons to tryout the whole process from beginning to end. Paying, viewing Videos, downloading the toolkit and having a go at creating a Stageplay or TV or Radio Script or a Film script.

Because I want to test EVERYTHING including payment, it does involve a small online payment but by using a codeword, that I send you when you email me, which you type into the OBTAIN box (instead of your old Toolkit serial number or the word "obtain"), the payment will be only one penny and you can of course keep using the Toolkit indefinitely.

There is more information on the toolkit page: http://www.datahighways.co.uk/dhl/toolkit.htm which also leads to the supporting videos on Youtube.

There is more info on the support page on my Support Forum: http://www.datahighways.co.uk/support/forum.asp?forum_id=25&forum_title=Script+Writers+Toolkit

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To do the testing make notes of the actions you take and report to me anything that doesn't work or anything that doesn't behave in the manner you expected it to.. Copy any error messages carefully, I need to analyse any errors and fix them.

Regards

Bill Williams ( aka BillWill )

I'd probably break it so I'll leave it to others to trial, but well done for making it.

Breaking it is the idea of QA testing.

The whole aim is to see if you CAN break it.

I'm not IT savvy enough to help alas. I can barely use the package I have, which is sold as the most user friendly one around. But I MAY have picked up one potential glitch already, reading this. I might well be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've tried paying some nominal little fee like 20p or something online and it wouldn't let me do it without a surcharge. It may have been by Paypal or could've been visa, but I think it asked me to pay a minimum of £2.50, unless I'm confusing it with something offline. So are you sure people can just pay 1p?

Well you could abort the purchase if you get that and hence test that the aborted page works OK.

But if it was Paypal long ago, they must have changed their actions because in all my own tests (paying from my private a/c to my business a/c) it went through OK, although with the fee being smaller than Paypal transaction fee, they took the whole penny and didn't transfer anything into my account.

Here's a little skit about the toolkit, to criticise.
I have to put a link to a PDF file because I can't post it in here without ruining the formatting (as far as I can tell) there doesn't seem to be any facility for preformatted text. such as [code][/code] or [pre]re].

http://www.datahighways.co.uk/dhl/downloads/R9538/intro.pdf

For those BCG members who might want to use the Toolkit, but don't want to be Quality Assurance testers, email me at: toolkit_2020 at datahighways.co.uk to be sent a codeword which will let you get a copy of Version 6 of the Toolkit at a heavily discounted fee. It's less than the price of one beer and you don't have to wear an anti-Corvid-19 mask and you can be within 6 inches of your characters in the scripts that you write.

Well done Bill. I would siign up but i have the duel failings of being an IT idiot, and serial non writer - i keep promising myself to write but there are a million excuses not too...

Great just what I need..

When I was head of QA at the University of London Computer Centre, we used to talk of needing QA testers to be "British Standard Idiots", because we could never predict what they might 'program'. Trouble is they only have a short lifetime as a BSI because they learn. So we needed a replenishable supply.

It's harder to test nowadays as too many people know how to use computers.

So, I'm a BSI eh? And to think my teachers said i would never amount to much. To be fair though it was the age where pencils were still steam driven.

I'll give it a go Bill!

Thanks for the link Bill. Will let you know how the sign up goes.