Your window layout follows you

While you test, the SurveyTester browser extension shows its windows on top of the survey: Answer Log, Issues, Survey Info, Survey Flow, Checklist and Test Case. Each of them can float anywhere on the screen or sit in the dock on the right, and you decide which ones are open. Once you have arranged them the way you like to work, SurveyTester keeps that arrangement for you.

Why this used to get lost

A browser normally remembers such settings per website and per browser profile. For survey testing that is not good enough:

• Incognito windows forget everything. Many teams test in Incognito mode to start every test run from a clean browser state. The same clean state also wiped your window layout, so every Incognito test started with the default windows again.
• Every survey site had its own layout. A survey that moves from a panel page to the survey platform and on to an end page runs on several websites, each with its own memory.
• Another PC meant starting over. A layout arranged on your desk PC was not there on your laptop.

How it works now

Your window layout is stored in your SurveyTester user profile:

1. When a test run starts, the extension loads your layout from SurveyTester.
2. On every survey page it puts the windows where you left them - in a normal window, in an Incognito window and on whichever website the survey is running.
3. Whenever you move or resize a window, open or close it, dock or undock it, or change the dock width, the change is saved to your profile right away.

What is remembered: which windows are open, whether each one floats or is docked, the position and size of the floating windows, the dock width, the Show all languages and overlay switches in the Issues window, and the switch for auto-detected issue markers in the bar.

Issue markers that you dragged aside on a survey page keep their positions for that page in your browser only. They are not part of the layout.

Windows always stay visible

A layout arranged on a large monitor can contain a window far to the right that would simply be outside of a small laptop screen. SurveyTester checks this every time a window appears:

• when a survey page is loaded,
• when you close a window and open it again with its button in the bar or the SurveyTester bubble at the bottom left,
• when you make the browser window smaller.

A window that would not fit is moved and, if needed, made smaller so that it is fully visible. A dock that would take more than half of the screen is made narrower.

The dock counts as the edge of the screen. It always sits on top of floating windows, so a floating window that would end up behind the dock is moved to the left of it - when you open it, when you dock another window and when you make the dock wider. You also cannot drag a floating window under the dock.

The survey makes room for the dock as well: the survey page becomes narrower, and bars, banners and buttons that a survey pins to the right edge of the screen are moved out from under the dock.

This adjustment is not saved. Back on your large monitor the window is where you put it. Only when you move or resize the window yourself on the small screen does that become your new layout.

Starting from scratch

If you want the default arrangement back, open the help in the SurveyTester bar and choose Reset SurveyTester Layout. This resets the layout in your profile as well, so it is reset everywhere: in every browser, every Incognito window and on every PC.

Good to know

• The layout belongs to your user, not to a project. It is the same in every project you test.
• If you test on two screens at the same time, the last change wins.
• Testers who open a shared test link without signing in to SurveyTester keep their layout in their browser only, as before. A shared test link is used by many people, and one stored layout for all of them would not help anybody.
• SurveyBots do not use or change your layout.
• You need the current version of the SurveyTester browser extension.