Wondering if your website works perfectly across the thousands of browsers and devices your customers use? As a seasoned quality assurance expert who has tested over 800 websites in my career, I can tell you this – rigorous cross browser compatibility testing is key to success in the digital world.
In this detailed guide, I will provide you a comprehensive 31-step browser and device testing checklist that ensures seamless functioning of any website or app, irrespective of the system used to access it.
Let‘s get started!
What is Cross Browser Compatibility Testing?
Before we get into the details, let‘s first quickly understand what cross browser testing means.
In simple terms, cross browser compatibility testing involves checking your digital product (website, web app, etc.) works well across diverse operating systems, devices, and internet browsers. The key aspects tested include:
- User Interface appearance: Do elements like images, buttons, navigation menus appear correctly across browsers?
- Functionality: Do all features like forms, videos, plugins work seamlessly across browsers?
- Speed: Does the site load and function fast enough on all target systems?
Per StatCounter, the 5 most widely used desktop browsers are:
- Google Chrome – 65%
- Apple Safari – 19.11%
- Mozilla Firefox – 7.2%
- Microsoft Edge – 7.59%
- Internet Explorer – 5.9%
On mobile, Android and iOS dominate with over 99% market share.
With such diversity, testing across browsers is critical. Failure to do so can cause a site to display incorrectly or loose functionality when accessed via specific browsers.
Research by SmartBear shows that over 66% of organizations experience production defects due to lack of browser testing. Further, unoptimized sites lead to 62% consumers abandoning a purchase online due to user experience issues.
After seeing these worrying trends for years, I decided to create the ultimate cross browser testing checklist to help quality teams launch flawless digital experiences.
This guide covers 31 critical compatibility tests spanning different areas like design, functionality, security and more. Let‘s get started!
The Complete 31 Step Cross Browser Compatibility Testing Checklist
A. Web Standards Validation Testing
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Validate HTML pages: Check all HTML pages against official W3C standards to remove syntax errors causing rendering issues across browsers.
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Confirm CSS validity: Use W3C CSS validators to fix CSS errors like unsupported selectors, properties, values etc. that affect cross browser layouts.
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Verify XHTML compliance: Test markup against XHTML standards, especially for mobile sites and apps accessed heavily via iPhones and iPads.
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Review SSL certificates: Examine validity of all SSL certificates across site domains. Debug any warnings or errors flagged on older browsers.
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Include DOCTYPE: Add a valid HTML !DOCTYPE declaration on top of all web pages to ensure consistent parsing across different browser engines.
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Set X-UA meta tag: Check and override IE compatibility view settings using the X-UA-Compat meta tag to enforce consistent rendering.
B. Design and User Interface Testing
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Verify layout consistency: Examine if UI elements like navigation menus, buttons, icons appear with identical dimensions and positioning across browsers.
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Check image rendering: Validate if all JPEG, GIF, SVG and other image formats load correctly across browsers. Account for Retina displays as well.
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Test form styling: Ensure uniform rendering of form components like text boxes, radio buttons, checkboxes across platforms.
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Examine grid/table display: Validate alignment, spacing and borders of grids, data tables and other structured content across diverse browsers.
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Review font rendering: Check if custom fonts display accurately across platforms. Verify size, colour and style continuity across browsers.
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Confirm icon visibility: Validate if font icons, glyphicons, icon fonts display correctly on all target browsers, specially older IE versions.
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Test Flash content: Previously popular, still verifyif all embedded Flash videos and widgets render seamlessly across browsers.
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Check scroll alignment: Confirm horizontal and vertical scrolling behaves predictably through long web page across different browsers, devices and viewports.
C. Responsive Design and Mobile-Friendliness Testing
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Verify media queries: Check if CSS media queries provide optimal layouts for smartphone, tablet and desktop viewports.
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Test tap targets: Ensure buttons, calls to action and touch targets follow accessibility guidelines on mobile devices and tablets.
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Confirm pinch/zoom: Validate seamless zoom behaviour across mobile browsers, specially tricky ones like Safari. Account for touchscreens as well.
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Examine mobile navigation: Verify navigation menus, toggles, dropdowns function predictably on mobiles to prevent hidden/hard to reach options.
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Review site speed: Page load times directly impact user experience on mobiles. Test site speed across networks and throttle tests.
D. Functional and Interaction Testing
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Validate forms and submissions: Check extensive form functionality across browsers – field validations, submissions, imports/exports, etc.
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Test plugins: Verify functionality of all embedded third-party plugins like chatbots, feedback widgets, social sharing bars across diverse browsers.
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Confirm multimedia playback: Ensure videos, animations and audio clips embedded on site playback smoothly without glitches or crashes.
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Check JS interactions: Test client-side JavaScript for any browser-dependent code that could cause functional gaps based on user environment.
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Verify keyboard access: Tab through pages using just keyboards to reach all interactive elements. Also test access keys consistency.
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Examine peripheral access: Test webcam, mic and other hardware access from web apps across browsers. Also check clipboard, printing integration.
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Validate location access: Test if browser correctly provides user location information to apps via Geolocation API as permitted.
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Confirm offline access: Check if offline usage scenarios work – caching assets, working with previously loaded resources, syncing data when back online etc.
E. Site Traffic and Load Testing
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Conduct load tests: Blast sites with virtual users from different browsers to gauge max traffic capacity before failures occur.
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Analyze site crashes: If crashes happen during traffic tests, debug browser-specific defects like memory leaks in JS, caching issues etc.
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Compare performance metrics: Measure TTFB, FPS, JS execution times across browsers to detect outliers causing sluggishness.
F. Security and Compliance Testing
- Audit for vulnerabilities: Actively scan sites using web app scanners to uncover browser-dependent security gaps like XSS bugs, invalid SSL certs etc.
This covers the 31 vital cross browser compatibility checks I perform for all digital products before launch. While lengthy, detecting hard to catch browser-specific defects saves future headaches!
Adding Automated Testing To Scale Coverage
Executing these 31 tests manually across browsers can get cumbersome. I recommend using test automation frameworks like Selenium, Cypress and BrowserStack which help run compatibility checks at scale.
For example, BrowserStack provides instant access to 3000+ real mobile devices and browsers to automate these compatibility tests. You can leverage frameworks like Selenium, Appium, Espresso to tap into these environments using a single integration.
This forms the last step in delivering flawless user experiences consistently across the evolving browser and device landscape!
I hope this guide gives you a blueprint to kickstart compatibility testing for your websites and apps. Feel free to reach out with any queries or suggestions to enhance this checklist!
