Cross Browser Testing

[AntonNiklasson]

Hey guys! I’ve been thinking about my own routines when cross browser testing my sites. And there’s a lot of room for improvements. So that’s why I’m writing this.

How do you test your sites?

Do you normally use PC or Mac? How about using hardware and actual installations of the other platform when testing?
Do you test in every single version of a browser?
What’s the most common issue when optimizing for all the various browsers?
Is there some sort of check list to create sites which will render the same in all browsers?

There’s a lot of questions to be answered. Please, feel free to discuss and explain what you do, and why.

[snillor]

Browser testing is always an issue. But I accept the fact that it’s not possible to test in every combination of platform and browser.

First of all, I validate (and revalidate regularly) my HTML and CSS. One browser might not have a problem with a bit of invalid code, while another breaks the site’s display.

Then I check it in the latest versions of common browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE, all for the PC).

Next I test in some slightly older versions of the above that I have on other computers in the house. However, I don’t bother with IE6, since I’ve made the decision to not support it (and fortunately don’t have clients that insist on supporting it).

Actually, my validating and browser-testing isn’t a one-time-only, step-by-step process; it’s an ongoing, repetitive activity. I usually have the site open in two or three browsers, and as I said above I revalidate often. (It’s happened a lot that a simple typo – maybe a comma instead of a period, or a missing semi-colon – in something I just typed caused problems that vary from browser to browser. Revalidating after every change might be overkill, but revalidating periodically, especially when I encounter problems, often finds the error.)

Since I don’t have a Mac and I don’t use AOL, I can’t test using those. So I have a few friends check out the site for me. AOL seems to give me the most trouble. (Do they still use a proprietary version of IE?)

I don’t worry about getting sites to render the same in every browser. First of all, it’s impossible. And because browsers vary so much in their support of, for example, CSS3, I’d have to design and code for the lowest common denominator and this means avoiding border-radius, gradients, and other goodies. Instead, I’ll use things like border-radius and gradients for those browsers capable of rendering them, maybe have workarounds (JavaScript solutions, Modernizr, etc.) to accommodate less capable browsers, or simply let these browsers do without. (IE users might not see rounded corners, but they’ll still get a site that looks good and performs well. And chances are they won’t even know what they’re missing.) I recently explained it to a new client like this: “It’s like a TV. You’re not gonna get HD, surround sound, or picture-in-a-picture on a small older TV. So you won’t see exactly the same thing someone with a state-of-the-art TV sees. You’ll get the best that your TV can provide.”

I don’t have an overall checklist. But I do maintain an Activity Log spreadsheet for every design job to track my hours, and in this I document which browsers I tested in, as well as final validation.

[OniLinkCR]

I have a Windows PC that I access remotely and then fire up all those browsers, including older versions of it. I can’t test IE9 yet as I am on XP for that machine.

[WouterJ]

I test my sites on all the major browsers (IE9, Opera11, FireFox5 (or 4?), Safari4) on a windows 7 and xp. And I go from IE7 to IE9 with IEtester.
Then I go to http://browserlab.adobe.com/ and test my sites on all the browsers.

And, off course, I validate my code. And when I use CSS3 or HTML5 I look what browser don’t support something and then I look for a resolve. (with google)

[GlitchMr]

I personally use PC with Windows 7 (and other slow laptop with Windows Vista). First, I validate documents (using validator.nu, because invalid documents might give bad things). I don’t care about CSS validation, CSS from always had detailed instruction about dealing with invalid documents and CSS3 prefixes cause documents to be invalid CSS.

Next I check sites in newest Opera (my default browser, so I check mostly in it), newest Google Chrome (and as this browser auto updates, I don’t care about old versions at all), newest Firefox and Internet Explorer versions 8 and 9.

I also check pages in Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, but only to see if random

doesn’t cause site to be unusable. Because I cannot officially have more than one version of IE on PC (and IE6-7 isn’t even available on Windows 7), I use IETester, which is awesome tool to have (along with DebugBar).

I skip Safari because it uses WebKit engine, and the results would be most likely similar to those made by Google Chrome.

The PC with Windows 7 is powerful machine, but that PC with Windows Vista is also useful because it allows me to see how website would be fast on slow PC (where Windows Vista barely works BTW).

[Sam2012]

Why don’t you try out some testing tool? testing across browsers can be frustrating. Tools like eggPlant can be a real help. More information at TestPlant.com

[Author]

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