How many browsers do you test in?
And how do you do it?
This is rather haphazard for me. I have four browsers on my computer between OS X and XP on Parallels, so I test in those. Other editors and reporters involved in each project have different browsers so they report back any issues in them.
It’s sporadic though and inconsistent. The last project I worked on, we discovered a javascript bug that only manifested itself in Firefox version 3.0.19 (and possibly others) and completely broke the graphic. Took quite a while to fix it.
Do people have like a set of computers with a whole bunch of different browsers installed as test computers or something?
Browser shots works well for layouts, but what about javascript interactions?
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6 Answers
I know of two online services that provide live interactive tests, not just screenshots:
- Cross Browser Testing which costs $20/month and up, but has a one-week free trial.
- Spoon Browser Sandbox which works only on Windows so I've yet to try it.
I haven't done enough javascript to give really informed advice here, but I haven't seen any really elegant solutions.
I spend significant time testing only 4-5 browsers I know from analytics (or guessing) that a significant number of visitors use, bouncing between my Mac and an old PC. Wish I could say I do more; I'd probably never catch a bug that's just in FF 3.0.18. Would love to hear if there are better methods to make testing consistent and non-sporadic, without becoming an enormous time suck.
Mobile, of course, is a whole other ballgame. Makes IE6 look like a day at the beach.
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Aren't you're really asking "How do I make my JavaScript cross-browser compatible?" The answer ... use JQuery!
At the end of the day, cross-browser support is a resource issue, and a good JavaScript library will save you much aggravation.
But if you'd rather not go that route, then you'll probably want to consider each OS/browser combination's standards compliance. Then the question might be "Which browsers are standards compliant enough to warrant our support?" To help with that are the Web Standards Project's acid tests, acid2.acidtests.org tests for CSS and acid3.acidtests.org tests for JavaScript.
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Pretty haphazard all around as far as I know. I try to test for various versions of FF and IE, plus Safari. The best cure I've found is to make sure javascript degrades gracefully, keep an eye on forums for bugs that might affect projects.
I haven't used this: http://mogotest.com/ but it looks like good stuff.
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I love using Lunascape (it runs Trident, Gecko and Webkit in tabs), and I supplement that with the ie quirks mode. Flipping through tabs and having only two progs running has made my life a heckuva lot easier.
And Eclipse and Firebug, of course, have been great for testing-as-I-write.
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Adobe's browserlab is a useful tool for testing.
It depends on your audience - high tech or low tech. Since I live in the north where IE6 is used extensively, I have to be wary and read the FAQ of everything I test to ensure compatibility.
Don't worry about Opera!
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Here's what I do:
- IE 6, 7, 8
- FF 3.6
- Safari, Chrome, Opera
I also use http://browsershots.org/ to test on the harder-to-reach browsers.
-Joe
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Your Answer
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Where we spend our intrinsically limited resources is decided by what percentage of users are using a particular browser. That means even if it badly fails the ACID tests if a large portion of users are using that browser (IE 6, for example) we have to support it.
Unless you’ve got endless resources of time and money, *of course* you decide which browsers to support. (I bet if you learned of an issue from an IE4 on the Mac user, you wouldn’t spend much time working on a fix!) The acidtests.org tools can help you decide where you spend your intrinsically limited resources.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of deciding what browsers to support. That’s decided by what browser/OS combinations our readers are using. And yes, jQuery is great for smoothing out cross browser complications, but it doesn’t replace testing.