06 September 2012

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Guide to Browser Compatibility Testing

Recently, I had to learn how to effectively test a web-based application across multiple

popular browsers.

Then I started to read various websites/blogs of Leaders in Software Testing, how other

testers approach this problem and what tools they are using for this.

On my personal research, I have found lots of information from testing community.

I would like to share the information to our Software Testing Newsletter.

Cross Browser Testing

Cross browser testing is a type of compatibility testing designed to ensure that a web

application behaves correctly (sometimes identically) in several different browsers

and/or browser versions.

Browser Compatibility Checklists

Here’s a handy browser testing checklist to refer while testing the web project on different browsers and operating systems:

1) CSS validation

2) HTML or XHTML validation

3) Page validations with and without JavaScript enabled

4) Ajax and JQeury functionality

5) Font size validation

6) Page layout in different resolutions

7) All images and alignment

8 ) Header and footer sections

9) Page content alignment to center, LHS or RHS

10) Page styles

11) Date formats

12) Special characters with HTML character encoding

13) Page zoom-in and zoom-out functionality

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And obviously you will have to repeat these tests on:

14) Different Operating Systems like Windows, Linux and Mac

15) Different browsers (with different versions) like Internet explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Cross-Browser Testing Tools (Free and Commercial)

IE Tester: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

BrowseEmAll: http://www.browseemall.com/?utm_expid=57129852-1

SuperPreview: http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565874.aspx

Browsera: http://www.browsera.com/

BrowserShots: http://browsershots.org/

Spoon.net: http://spoon.net/browsers

CrossBrowserTesting: http://crossbrowsertesting.com/

SauceLabs: https://saucelabs.com/features

TestStudio: http://www.telerik.com/automated-testing-tools

Adobe BrowserLab: https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html

Selenium: http://seleniumhq.org/

Lunascape 6: http://www.lunascape.tv/

Validation Checkers:

HTML, XHTML Validators: http://validator.w3.org/

CSS Validators: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

06 September 2012

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Estimating Risk of Bugs

This information represented graphically below helps to explain a particular test strategy

of probability of finding the bugs to the team.

If you have one or more browsers in the red or amber area then this is probably where

the testers should turn their thoughts first and Browsers in the green area then follows.