Bugs found in Toronto Star ePaper Edition for iOS
Toronto Star ePaper Edition is a mobile app, which provides access to electronic replicas of printed newspapers. The app preserves the original format of printed newspapers to recreate that special feeling of flipping through pages that so many people love. Toronto Star ePaper also offers a couple of interactive and super handy features, such as searching by keywords and saving favorite articles via bookmarks. Another cool feature is the ability to access previous newspaper editions as far as six months back. If you want to give your eyes a little break but you also want to read that story immediately, just enable the text-to-speech feature and enjoy your audio. On top of that, you can print stories, share them via social media, and translate them into 17 different languages.
Toronto Star ePaper has amazed us with an abundance of convenient features, and we assume not only us, but all the newspaper lovers worldwide. So we ran some quick tests to see if the app functions as intended and if there are any areas that have been overlooked. Here are the Toronto Star ePaper Edition bugs we managed to detect.
There is no email validation at the sign-in step.
Severity:
Major
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open the app.
- Tap the “Profile” icon.
- Enter invalid data to the email field, e.g. “test.test”.
Environment:
iPhone XS + iOS 14.2
Actual Result:
The user can proceed with the data input.
Expected Result:
The field is highlighted in red; the error message ‘Invalid email format’ pops up.
“Text-to-speech” icon is still displayed after this function was turned off in Settings.
Severity:
Major
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open the app.
- Go to “Settings” / “Reading”.
- Turn off the “Native iOS text-to-speech” function.
- Open any ‘Star Week’ epaper.
- Tap the ‘dynamic’ icon.
Environment:
iPhone XS + iOS 14.2
Actual Result:
The text-to-speech function is launched with a disabled and non-user-friendly screen.
Expected Result:
The “dynamic” icon is disabled and there is no option to launch the text-to-speech function.
No error message during the attempt to purchase an epaper with the Internet off.
Severity:
Major
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open the app.
- Find an epaper for purchase.
- Turn on the airplane mode on the device.
- Tap “Open”.
Environment:
iPhone XS + iOS 14.2
Actual Result:
The “Requesting Delivery” message pops up and disappears.
Expected Result:
The error message “Please, check your Internet connection” pops up.
The list of epapers gets broken once switching between the landscape and portrait modes.
Severity:
Major
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open the app.
- Go to the “Settings” page.
- Turn the phone to change the mode to landscape.
- Go back to the “Available Now” page in the landscape mode.
- Open the “Settings” page again.
- Turn the phone to change the mode to portrait.
- Go back to the “Available Now” page.
Environment:
iPhone XS + iOS 14.2
Actual Result:
The view of the epaper list is distorted; the blocks and the spaces between them are uneven.
Expected Result:
The view of the epaper list is shown without visual defects.
An error message pops up after cancelling the purchase.
Severity:
Major
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open the app.
- Purchase any epaper.
- Cancel the purchase.
Environment:
iPhone XS + iOS 14.2
Actual Result:
“The operation couldn’t be completed” message pops up.
Expected Result:
Nothing happens; the user can navigate the app further with no error messages popping up.
Toronto Star ePaper is an app with some great ideas but poor implementation. It hasn’t been tested for the basics like authorization issues, settings management, and different view modes. I feel like the app requires a more prominent QA effort to fine-tune and build on the existing user stories and eliminate confusing pop-ups. To make users stop reading newspapers from browsers, apps like Toronto Star ePaper need first to polish their features to really elevate the whole reading process.
