I'm about to start some cross browser testing of a design.
In your opinion is it worth testing browsers across a number of operating systems? As the browser is using the same rendering engine will the design likely be the same or are there inconsistencies big enough to warrant testing on different platforms?
For example, is it worth testing IE9 on Windows 7 and Vista?
Is it worth testing Safari on Mac and Windows? If I do this is it worth testing on different versions of Windows?
If I test Firefox in Windows is it worth testing on Linux and Mac?
I don't think that different version of the same OS influence the page rendering of a given browser.
On the other hand, it would be wise to test the same browser on different OS' as some page elements are OS dependent. Take form inputs and controls for instance. Also Fonts are rendered different based on the OS.
A big YES.
I have seen both FireFox and Safari acting differently between Win, Mac and Linux systems.
Specially around places with significant JS and advanced CSS implementations.
I personally have not seen differences in IE within different Windows versions.
Short answer: Yes, especially if there's a lot of Javascript on your page.
Long answer. In my experience, testing web application on the same browser in different versions of Windows did not reveal any significant bugs, specific to an operating system. However it is very fruitful to test your app on Windows and non-windows OS.
Related
I've seen download manager programs including IDM taking control of downloads in browsers without having extensions in them and they are calling it (Advanced Browser Integration).
I was wondering if anyone can suggest an approach for a similar situation?
IDM only works on Windows and does his Advanced Browser Integration tricks using Windows Filtering Platform which is a windows specific service.
If you want to do something similar on Windows, you should study that platform.
On unix systems, as far as I know, there isn't anything like the Windows Filtering Platform. Packet filtering and other firewall like functionality happens in the kernel and there are multiple implementations of that: which is running (if any) depends on how the user decided to configure the system (even if ipf is almost guaranteed to be the used one on BSD and BSD derived systems).
On Mac Os X specifically you probably want to check Network Kernel Extensions. I'm not sure they are sufficient to do what you want to do, but I suspect they are.
We are looking for an automated testing software for our web application. We need to come up with a solution or software that our non-it staffs could write test cases as well as the developers.
For example I've run through some of them such as: SmartBear, National Instrument and IBM. Most of these guys are MS Windows based or commercial Linux distros which remove them from our list since we are all Debian based.
Any recommendation or guideline would be much appreciated.
Ps. We don't have any budget limit!
You're going to have a hard time getting tooling for non-technical testers to build test cases if you limit yourselves to Debian OS for developing and running the tests on. There's no reason you couldn't have a few Windows system to manage your test suites from -- those would run against your web site just fine, regardless of what stack it's hosted on. That would open you up to the tools you mentioned (and Telerik's Test Studio, the tool I help promote).
Those Windows systems could easily be run via whatever virtualization host you prefer, so you wouldn't even need physical systems to deal with that. You could easily share the same source control repository as your devs, too, since nearly every decent SCM has Windows clients.
If you're unwilling to consider having a few Windows boxes around for your testing, then you'll need to have a look at getting all your testers proficient in APIs and frameworks like WebDriver and Robot Framework. The Pages gem from Jeff Morgan (#chzy) in Ruby would be another option, as would Adam Goucher's Saunter (in Python).
When building websites I commonly use tools such as Browsershots to ensure that my pages looks reasonably OK in the different browsers. I am however starting to get complaints about a heap of mobile browsers running on different portable devices.
My question is simply how do one best carry out mobile cross-browser tests ? (answers that does not require me to install a ton of different mobile emulators will be preferred).
DeviceAnywhere can do this, but not for free.
The answers are old.
Nowadays, there are many more options.
Check out "Browserstacks", or google for "alternatives to Browserstacks". Some services offer (paid) automation for testing across devices.
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ will provide you with several good advices, but won't provide any mobile devices' screenshots...
I'm afraid Felipe's right, the only way to know how your website interacts is to do it yourself.
I need to provide our web developers an easy and quick way to test their code on multiple browsers. Here's my current plan:
Get a Mac
Install Windows XP and Linux over VMWare
Install all possible major browsers on these OSes, including on the Mac and the god-forsaken IE6.
This will allow developers to use the system to test their applications.
But is it possible to give them some sort of desktop sharing tool, so they can test remotely... keeping in mind that the their systems can be windows, linux(linus?) or macs.
Or am I doing it all wrong?
There are a few viable options I have used:
Get hardware. If you develop on Macs and have an old Windows box laying around, you might as well use it. You then need to figure out how you are going to connect to it. I have used:
(a) remote control tool (like VNC) to
a shared box. At one company we had a
IE6 testing box we all VNCed into
(b) Synergy on my desktop (which
allows sharing keyboard and mouse)
(c) Walking
VMs. Some developers like this because they have everything on one box, and can take it with them. You'll probably need multiple VMs for different versions of Windows. I've done this with both Parallels and VMWare.
External service. #chotchki mentioned one, but there are many others.
My current favorite is 1b, but they are all workable.
To answer your question: VMs are a reasonable solution.
There a web service that already does this Browser Shots. You can also install the software on your own systems if you want to host your own.
Is anyone out there aware of any good or even reasonable tools for automated testing on the Windows CE / mobile platforms. Potential tools that I am aware of include TestQuest, Countdown, SOTI pocket controller, and Eggplant. Are there any more that I have missed?
Alternatively, is anyone aware of a VNC or remote display tool for Windows mobile that replicates the Windows visual object hierarchy on the PC, rather than displaying the entire device as a single bitmap? If this could be done, mainstream desktop automation tools could be applied to Windows mobile.
N.B. I have already read this related question which is useful, but am looking for a viable off the shelf alternative. This post is following up on a number of related posts in the PDA/Embedded section of SQAforums.
I realize that your question is directly "are there tools to do the automated testing on CE", but have you considered perhaps aiming your automation at a version of the app which can be accessed from a standard desktop environment? In this way, you are open to all of the standard automation tools.
For example, I have worked on a few projects where we needed to perform automated testing for the device. In all cases, the RF device was really just a web browser connecting to a web based app. The same URL and simple forms could be plugged into a standard desktop browser and be automated by any of the usual automation toolsets. Automation never replaces manual testing, so what we did on those projects was automate regression testing of the same web interface that was used by the RF devices, but still do some sanity manual testing directly on the devices.
Also, with regards to the VNC/bitmap issue, I've been down that road before and agree that it is a nightmare. Using standard desktop UI automation on a VNC bitmap is not only unreliable and unmaintainable, but slow - in most tools, the CPU churns away searching the entire bitmap from top left to bottom right for the desired image. Really really slow.
Check Hopper, a test tool for Windows Mobile.