Cross browser and cross platform web based application testing
When performing web based application testing in different browsers and under different operating systems variations can be often observed. The reason for this, are differences when interpreting Javascript code, which again causes differences in the functionality of applications, and differences in dealing with invalid HTML. Additionally there are differences in the HTML rendering not only on the operating system side but also on the browser side caused by a different interpretation of CSS.
figure 1 the following variations have to be considered when performing web based application testing using different browser/platform combinations
To decide, whether it is really necessary to include different platform/browsers combinations in the process of web based application testing one has to get information about the browser/platform combinations deployed by the future users first. For websites one could e.g. utilize user access statistics of comparable sites or general statistics of certain target groups. Usually the combinations Windows XP/Vista/Seven – Firefox version 2 and 3/Internet explorer version 6 ,7 and 8 are often chosen for web based application testing. But this can vary depending on the target group.
Quite often web based application testing under different browser/platform combinations is skipped due to the high additional effort. Even when using automated test tools (see also automated web testing), a separate test suite would have to be recorded for each possible combination.
An alternative are automated test tools with a browser and platform independent approach. Once recorded, test scripts can be used for web based application testing under different combinations without modification, which enormously reduces the effort. This approach is being used for the web testing tool web2test (you can find more information about the approach of web2test in the Functional web testing article).
web2test is hence is among others suited for:
- web based application testing regarding differences in functionality
- web based application testing regarding variations in rendering under different browser/platform combinations (see Positioning of web2test in the overall area of web testing for a complete overview of the test software ‘s areas of application)
The “Cross browser and cross platform web based application testing” article in German:
