An easy way to get involved and make a difference in Firefox and Thunderbird development is participating as a tester, helping the Mozilla Quality Assurance (QA) process.

Litmus is a web based tool developed by Mozilla that hosts all the tests that can be ran on Firefox and Thunderbird, and anyone can join and run as many tests as his/her time and interest allows.

Tests are for future releases so you will need to get a nightly before running the tests. For Firefox 2.0.x, Firefox 3.0 and Thunderbird 2.0.x.

With a nightly just installed, visit Mozilla Litmus and create an account. Click Log in in the left sidebar and provide your name, email address and password.

Once you get an account, go back to the home page and select what product you want to test: Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Thunderbird 1.5, Thunderbird 2 or a localization.

Third, select the platform and operating system you will run the tests on. For example Windows/Windows XP. You should also select the language as they are not limited to English.

Now, select what component you want to test. You can test whatever you want. As you will find out, tests are very simple to follow, so don’t be discouraged if you think it’s an area you’re not very familiar with. You are most likely to be able to test any area.

Finally, you get to the test. You will see a few steps to follow and a menu to enter the result: Pass, Fail or Test unclear, for when you don’t understand a test. Comments are always welcomed and are another way to improve the testing process.

You can submit the result for a single test or a whole set (2 – 10 small tests) at a time.

Each test takes about 2 minutes, so you can really help dedicating a few minutes a week. Also, Mozilla QA schedules testdays that focus on specific components. For example, yesterday’s testday focused on proper operating system integration with Windows Vista and Mac OS X, as well as the new site specific preferences and text zooming.

If you have any problem running a test you can get help on Mozilla IRC server. To get there you will need an IRC client such as ChatZilla, which installs as a Firefox extension, or via a web based interface like IRC@Work. Connect to irc.mozilla.org server and join the testday channel (/join testday). Someone will gladly help you with any problem you may encounter.

Next testdays will focus on:

• 28th September: Security/Privacy
• 5th October: Tabbed Browsing / Download Manager
• 12th October: Accessibility
• 19th October: Places
• 26th October: OS Integration Vista/Mac / Installer testing (Bug 370571)
• 2th November: Extension Manager / Password Manager

For a more complete idea of how a testday goes visit this Mozilla QA blog post.