As someone who has been professionally testing web and mobile applications for over 10 years on thousands of real devices and browsers, I cannot stress enough the importance of both responsive design testing and cross browser testing. While they serve complementary purposes, failing to account for either one during development puts the user experience at risk. In this comprehensive guide, I will break down the key elements of both forms of testing so you can make informed decisions for your team moving forward.
Let‘s start by grounding ourselves in some core definitions. Responsive design testing evaluates how your site‘s content reflows and resizes on different screen sizes, from desktop monitors down to mobile phones. Cross browser testing, on the other hand, assesses how that same site content renders across different desktop and mobile browsers, on both Windows and macOS operating systems.
While resizing issues impact site usability, so do browser and OS-related compatibility problems. Just because a site functions perfectly in Chrome on an iPhone does not mean it will have that same flawless experience in Safari. Designing and testing for both adaptable content and multi-browser functionality takes a bit more upfront work, but saves tremendous headaches down the road.
The growth of mobile internet usage over the past decade underscores why responsive design is now a requirement rather than an option. As of 2022, well over 50% of website traffic comes from smartphones alone. Tablets and emerging devices add to that mobile share further still.
With responsive design, sites dynamically resize, hide and stack elements, and reflow content to optimized versions for every screen width. But without rigorous testing, some of that responsiveness may break down at certain sizes. Comprehensive testing is the only way to catch these issues.
Key Elements to Test
When testing for responsive design, key elements to assess across various viewport sizes include:
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Text: Confirm no overflow or wrapping problems at any size. Text should condense logically at smaller sizes.
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Images: Images should resize proportionally without pixelation or extra white space.
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Navigation Menus: Menus should condense logically for mobile while retaining full functionality.
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Forms: Input fields, select menus, and text areas should remain easily visible and usable on mobile sizes without zooming.
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Functionality: All site capabilities should remain intact regardless of viewport size. Links, buttons, drop-downs should work seamlessly.
Real Devices vs. Emulators
When testing responsive design, actual smartphones, tablets, and responsive viewport resizing tools will provide the most accurate results over emulators. Mobile emulators ignore factors like actual touch target sizes that impact real mobile site usability.
Tools like BrowserStack offer testing access to vast libraries of real mobile and tablet devices on live networks around the world – far more device variety than any one tester could source independently. Such tools also incorporate AI to enable automated visual testing at scale.
A Responsive Testing Master Checklist
While individual sites will have unique needs, this checklist summarizes must-have elements to evaluate during responsive testing:
- Homepage layout at widths from 320px up through 1600px
- Functional testing of all site capabilities across sizes
- Consistent rendering across iOS and Android devices
- Images retaining clarity without pixelation
- Appropriate stacking/hiding as elements condense
- No horizontal scrolling below 1200px
- No overlapping elements
- Readable and "tappable" text and links, buttons
- Review heatmaps for usability data
Following these guidelines helps surface the majority of responsive issues – but always consider additional sizes and test cases unique to your site architecture as well.
The Efficiency of Test Automation
Testing responsiveness manually across real devices is time consuming, but automating repetitive checks via AI tools expedites the process considerably…
