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Closed 10 years ago.
How do i do browser compatibility testing?
Is there any particular way or checklist through which i can confirm compatibility testing on browser IE 6/7/8 is done.
Let me extend my query in particular to a application :
Let us assume a web application is tested in IE6 (Approx 5000 Test Cases)
Now i need to check the application compatibility in IE7 & IE8 also.
How do i go with ? since i cannot execute all the 5000 Test Cases in all the browsers
I need to know exactly where the problem could occur when tested in IE7 & IE8 browser.
what is the benchmark to test the application compatibility across the Browsers?
For testing a website in different IE versions I use IETester.
I don't have a checklist, but I just visually compare the websites in the different browser and check if the css and javascript (e.g. jQuery plugins) are working as intended. Most of the time you know what parts could be causing problems in older browser versions...
I sometimes use BrowserShots, but it will only show screenshots and there are delays in retrieving the screenshots, so you have to wait for results...
Microsoft has released Expression Web SuperPreview that permits testing of multiple versions of IE (6, 7, 8) side-by-side.
IE only testing is free. They have plans to add support for Firefox and Safari too and charge for it. It looks quite interesting but is still just beta.
A review with quite a number of screen shots:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090318/expression-web-superpreview-cross-browser-testing/
Download the beta:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e6ac106-525d-45d0-84db-dccff3fae677&displaylang=en
Another link:
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/microsoft-announces-superpreview-for-ie-browser-testing/
I understand that your current test cases are not automated.
On top of what the other answers suggest, it feels to be a good idea to automate some of the test cases (the most important/critical scenarios) - check out watin or Selenium. Then, you can run those against multiple browsers to catch some errors. You can make screenshots during the test run and use visual compare tools to detect changes and regressions, which will greatly help you maintaining the app.
Doing that and tracking IE bugs will get you only to some point. You can't completely avoid manual testing...
The good news is that you do not have to worry much about IE8 - it is more standards compliant and you can always use IE7-compatible tag, so it uses IE7 rendering engine.
Try Multiple IEs.
You need
Microsoft SuperPreview
It has redering engines from IE6 to IE8 and also support Firefox and Safari. Also check out this blog post for detailed information and another methods of cross browser testing.
To rescue the web designers from this aching job of testing browser compatibility in different browsers there are few websites which offer this service. On these websites you can check the compatibility of your website in all desired browsers. You can find these websites at http://www.bestpsdtohtml.com/7-awesome-resources-to-test-cross-browser-compatibility-of-your-website/
Try looking up frameworks for unit testing in Javascript (jsUnit for example). Having a large test case will reduce the pain of testing your code in different browsers!
Try using VM Ware Fusion so you may install several operating systems on your machine. Then install all the browsers you need to test against on the different platforms.
Personally I run Fusion on a OSX box, with Windows 7 and Windows XP installed. On Win7 I run IE8, on XP i run IE7.
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Closed 4 years ago.
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when we develop a web site then we do not know how web site behave in other browser and also in a specific browser with different version. i have seen few web site is there where we can put our web site url and it generate image of our web site. those functionality is not good. so i like to know is there any free tool exist which give me browser like feeling where we can put our web site url and do the interaction with our web site.
i am looking for best free tool to test web site functionality and UI look. share the idea. thanks
One tool i know is Browserstack. It offers free trial for half an hour. If you need more, just register again with new email or support them and buy this product. It also offers you to test local links on different platforms and browsers.
There is also saucelabs that offers free testing for some browsers, but if you want to test local link then you need to buy it.
Also crosbrowsertesting offers free trial. But it only supports mac osx 10.8 and windows 7 in free trial and a bunch of browsers and different versions.
Hope this info helped.
Have you already tried this: https://spoon.net/browsers ?
There are of course more containers than browsers.
If you need that feature in a long term purposes I would consider to setup your own containers e.g with help of Docker (https://www.docker.com/) or with Selenium Grid. If you automate UI tests, Selenium Grid will help you with parallel run and its distributions.
There are lot of tools available on internet but really I do not trust on result which they produce. They are good but not perfect.
If you really want to do pixel precise testing of UI in diff.browsers then do manually testing OR you can make it automate using selenium web driver & TestNG framework. You can also use selenium grid for this purpose.
Kindly refer : Cross browser testing
There is a couple of another sites. Maybe someone will find it helpful.
cloudtesting
browserling
saucelabs
crossbrowsertesting
browsera
https://www.equafy.com also has a free version.
Only MacOs is not available for free, but if it is for open source project this is included
I am affiliated with equafy.com.
Cross browser testing tools have progressed a lot in the past couple of years with some of the tools now offering automated solutions.
We've recently researched the market and put together our list of the top tools which are available today.
If you have any feedback or know of any additional ones which should be added, please do let me know.
This question already has answers here:
What's the best way to test cross-browser compatibility?
(4 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
when we develop any website then it looks good at our end but client may view the page with different browser then he/she face problem. i search for tool or way by which i can view my pages from my local machine using different browser and different version. i found few web site provide this facility and saw they very slow and they are giving image of my page which i do not want rather i want to view my page in browser. so i want a tool which allow me to select browser and version and then show my page in that browser with specific version. i may change version and page should refresh for changing browser or version. i hope there must be many tool available but unfortunately i not getting right single one. can anyone guide me. thanks
Adobe shut down BrowserLab a few weeks ago, but provided some guidance for other services that you can use on this page. There there are the Spoon.net browser sandboxes, but it installs the VM on your computer and I never liked that.
I personally use VMWare virtual machines with olders versions of IE on Windows, and Safari on a Mac VM. A little more effort to set this up, but I find it works best.
I'm looking for an offline software that can speed up the testing of a website in different browsers.
Yes, I can install Opera, Firefox, Chrome, IE and Safari and test in each one, but this slow down the process because there are a lot of changes to be done in the website I am working and each change must be tested in all browsers.
More specifically, I am looking for something similar to IETester, but for different browsers. I'm not interested in online services (there are a lot), but offline.
So, someone knows something like this?
I find the Selenium tool [ http://seleniumhq.org/ ] very useful for such needs:
there are drivers for almost all modern and not-so-modern browsers: firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome, Safari..
scales quite well through the webdriver thing (remote control execution of tests on many different hosts), and
is well established: there are many resources available around to develop and deploy it.
Main drawback, as for my own experience: the learning curve is somewhat tough.
There is also a nice test management tool especially targeted at Selenium: Bromine (disclaimer: I did not yet use Bromine, but saw great comments on it).
Regards,
--
boris
Adobe BrowserLab for Desktop Browsers (Free) As noted in the comments, this has been discontinued. But they recommend Sauce labs, and Browser Stack instead.
Adobe Edge Inspect aka Shadow is also available and does all the above quite well. It is primarily for Mobile Browser testing and debugging.
Microsoft's Expression Suite also has its own Cross-Browser Testing utility, called Expression Web Super-Preview.
In Microsoft's words,
You can view browser renderings side-by-side horizontally or
vertically, or overlay them to identify differences. You can use
rulers and guides to measure and highlight visual problems. You can
zoom in and out of a page and see all the browser renderings update in
tandem.
You can try BrowseEmAll (http://www.browseemall.com) which is a desktop application for windows (and sadly windows online).
Still it contains all major browsers and simulators for iOS and Android which should make the testing easier than switching between different browsers manually.
If you like groovy, then try Spock.
I've experimented with Spock and Gem for BDD tests.
Prob 1 : Do I need to care about some bugs of Firefox 2, firefox 3, chrome7,8, opera 8,9... etc that can make my site look weird on these old browser ? I wonder if the developer changed the HTML-render-engine everytime they update their browser & make my site imcompatible with all version.
Will almost visitors keep their browser up2date ? If not, please suggest me with some tools that can help me test my site against FF, Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari in all major versions.
(I've try this by some online services but it's extremely slow to take screen shot of my site)
Prob 2 : Is there any difference among browser for PC, Tablet, Mobile (except the screen resolution) that can cause a display error for my website ?
Thanks a lot!
Well, whether you should test your website against:
all browsers: Yes, because Windows users have any among IE, Chrome, Firefox & in remote cases, Safari, Opera among others. Whereas Mac users will have Safari, Chrome as their preferred one.
all versions: Probably no. Limit yourself to only those which are still supported, i.e. IE 7 onwards & so on.
But, the key lies in the engine upon which the browser is based upon. It can be said:
*OS: Kernel :: Browser:Engine*
For instance, Chrome, Safari, both are based upon "webkit" layout engine.
Check out, web-layout engines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
(This consideration will save a lot of effort as you can be rest assured that browsers using same engine will behave in a similar manner.)
Also, keep in consideration your target audience, this can help you limit your browser choices.
And yeah, most browsers have developer tools (F12 key), which allow you to simulate the previous versions of the browser.
But, all in all, the answer is relative & depends solely upon how much time you have & how much effort, time, testing are you willing to spend...
Developers should always try to make their websites cross browser compatible. I personally wouldn't worry about the very old versions of browsers (ie. Firefox 2) and would instead display a message telling the user that they should upgrade their browser.
As a lot of users don't always upgrade their browsers straight away, you should still try to maintain the compatibility of your site with these browsers.
I would recommend this tool for checking the browser compatibility of your website https://browsershots.org/
As a general rule there is a quick and dirty way to test your site. The dirty assumption is that if it works on IE, it will work in anything since IE handles more things differently than other browsers.
With that being said, you can test on IE by opening up an IE9 browser window and hitting F12. This will bring up a box on the bottom that allows you to check the site for compatibility quickly. On the top right hand corner of the box that popped up there are two drop down menus to change the IE engine that is interpreting the site (The one on the left is the Engine and the one right is compatibility mode that the engine is running). You can switch between IE7 engine to IE9 engine seamlessly and without needing a 3rd party application to do so.
Tools like Selenium are good for testing user interactions on the web UI. However, I was curious what are people approaches for strictly testing and verifying that web pages are rendered correctly across a set of browsers?
Is this even possible?
May I recommend browsershots where you can submit pages and have them rendered out in a variety of browsers with various things set on or off such as Flash and JavaScript. At the end of the day you will still want to install FF, IE6-8, Opera and Safari/Chrome for testing manually. Also, if you've got a friend with a Mac (or a PC if you're using a Mac) get them to test in Safari too as I've personally found differences in the way both of them render the same page.
I'd also recommend that you develop mainly in Firefox and regularly check it in IE6 as you work. IE6 is the one that will mostly screw up so if it's working in both it's more likely to be working in all.
When you find rendering weirdness try and fix it in your markup and CSS first before resorting to CSS hacks as they can lead to 'interesting' problems later or in other browsers.
There is only a handful of browsers you need to test, as some share a common rendering engine (Gecko or Webkit). Without explaining which or why, here's the current wisdom (2009):
Build your site using Firefox or Opera (on any platform). BTW Opera uses its own Presto engine;
Test in whichever of the above you didn't use.
Validate the (X)HTML and CSS (important!).
Test it in >=IE7 and note the glitches, if any.
Use conditional comments in separate stylesheets for each version IE - never use CSS hacks as they'll go out of date.
Test in IE <7 if you like and do the same, or use conditional comments to ask users (politely) to upgrade their version of IE.
Test in Safari (Webkit).
Don't test in Chrome, you already have by proxy (Webkit)!
Don't test in IE for Mac - the share is too low and it's no longer updated.
Finally, try enlarging the text in Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari. Opera also has a hand-held emulation mode for mobiles.
You will have now covered (theatrical guess) 99.9% of browser setups. If you're on OS X or Linux, you can run Windows in a virtual environment like Parallels or Wine. Apparently Wine also has a Windows binary, but I couldn't find it. Caution: you'll need to be sure that your virtual environment allows IE to read conditonal comments.
In practice, I find that if a site has valid code and works in Firefox, Safari and Opera, it'll probably be okay in IE7 up. The only HTML/CSS gotcha is IE's 'haslayout' handling. If you don't have the browsers, BrowserStack is an excellent online testing service.
Finally, if you're using Javascript, you'll need to go through a similar process, problem being that as a rapidly developing area, newer versions of some browsers handle Javascript in increasingly effective ways, so functions in older versions might break or fail quietly.
If you just want to see if layout is correct, just submit your website to BrowserShots.org and visit later to see the screenshots.
If you want to test the functionality (JavaScript, etc.) then you'll need to test manually.
Manually?
I do not see an alternative if you want strict testing. Just install as many different browsers as possible and test in all of them. Of course this includes different versions of most popular browsers, and you need to check on Windows, Linux and Macintosh.
Previously I was use WM for different versions of IE, but I find out some new tool for testing layout, and UI as well with this tool, link for FF use fire bug extension, those tools are for manually testing.