A simple guide to cross-browser testing

Published: 24 March 2011

Cross-browser compatibility testing is an important part of maintaining your website - here's a basic guide to what's involved.

After our posts earlier this week about the importance of testing websites in IE9 and FF4, we had a number of enquiries asking for more detail about the cross-browser testing process.

Why is cross-browser testing important? It's important because your website visitors probably won't be using the same browser that you use, and different browsers display websites differently.  As the operator of a website, you need to be sure that your visitors can see and use your website as you had intended.

In simple terms, if you want to attempt cross-browser compatibility testing yourself, you need to think about three issues:

Which browsers need to be tested? Your choice will vary, but you should consider more than one version of Internet Explorer, and include recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.  You might want to consider testing on different operating systems too - we still occasionally find differences between Windows and Mac versions of the same browser.

Tests for visual appearance - you might imagine that "the ideal scenario" is that the website should look identical in every browser - but in practical terms this is usually impossible (e.g. if your website uses modern HTML5/CSS3 features that are not supported in older browsers).  Instead, a test to ensure that your website's appearance "degrades gracefully" in older browsers is usually more appropriate. (Sometimes people refer to this as progressive enhancement for modern browsers, but it's the same basic concept).

Tests for client-side functionality - any feature that was built to run in the browser needs to be checked.  Typically this means any feature developed in javascript.  Most tests of client-side functionality can be automated to some degree.

There's a lot of work required to create and maintain a comprehensive cross-browser testing environment, which is why we invested in setting one up!  We use it for both new-build projects and existing websites, and we can provide a range of development and support services to help you fix any cross-browser issues that we identify.