Have you ever come across an application that works fine on your Firefox browser but does not show a button properly when accessed through Internet Explorer? Or an application warrants that you have a certain version and higher of your…
Have you ever come across an application that works fine on your Firefox browser but does not show a button properly when accessed through Internet Explorer? Or an application warrants that you have a certain version and higher of your favourite browser to be able to access that application? Welcome to the world of cross browser compatibility of applications.
When we access applications like our favourite e-commerce portal or our banking application, we do not worry much about the device we are accessing from – it can be from our mobile devices, personal laptop, official computer or the internet cafe round the corner. As online access to services provided by businesses are becoming ubiquitous, technology is also progressing in an extremely rapid pace. This proliferation of technology has made the job of application developers and testers all the more difficult, because now they have to ensure that the application runs smoothly on every OS/Browser combination.
The complexity:
In the consumer targeted space, users access applications from mobile devices and desktop systems. In mobiles we have 5 popular operating systems – Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows and arguably Symbian and others. Let’s assume each to have 3-4 versions in circulation. We have thus at least 15-20 OS versions just on mobiles.
On desktops, we have Mac OSX, Windows and various flavours of Linux like Ubuntu. Mac has 7 OS versions, Windows have 4 and Ubuntu has 2 major ones. Thus we have some 15 of desktop operating systems. Together we have 30-35 operating systems just on consumer devices.
Now let’s look at browsers. We have Android browser (2), Chrome (25), Chrome Mobile (7), Firefox (35), Firefox mobile (5), Internet Explorer (6), Mobile safari (5), Safari (6), Opera (14), Opera Mobile (9) and many other not so popular browsers. We have at least 125 different browser versions.
Multiply that with 20 OS versions and we have 150*20 = 3000 potential combinations. It is a tester’s nightmare and an opportunity for automation.
Another angle to the complexity is the language the application is developed on.
The solution:
To address these challenges, a new breed of testing automation and test management solutions have emerged who help testers test their applications automatically across various combinations of language, OS and browsers. These applications provide accurate results, highlight issues, capture execution details and provide a seamless testing experience.
One of the software offerings that address this problem talks about 750+ browsers across 55 different operating systems and mobile devices. They provide solutions to accurate rendering across all these.
Cross browser testing involves client side as well as server side testing. Testing tools help test the application functionality on client side on different browsers. These tools allow recording of the application testing steps on one browser and run a test on different browsers without the need of re-recording for each browser.
Cross browser testing automation was earlier the privilege of large product or technology services companies. But with the advent of advanced test automation and management software as provided by Bqurious, immaculate testing has been democratized and reached smaller organizations who cannot afford huge trained manpower for conducting these elaborate tests manually.
A new dawn in test automation is slowly unfurling, and no one is left out.