Cross Browser Testing

What is a Cross Browser Testing ?

Cross browser testing is a type of compatibility testing designed to ensure that a web application or website behaves correctly (sometimes identically) in several different browsers and/or browser versions.

Where Cross browsing testing is needed and why?

Testing play critical role for the development of website and long term maintenance. If you are developing small commercial website then no need of formal testing but if you are developing a large use of commercial website or web application then we need cross browser testing. As we know that any website is working properly in one browser then not necessary work properly in other browser. Then by testing the website or web application and ensure that which web browser is suitable. Example: If you filling a online examination for then there is mention this form should fill by using particular web browser otherwise may be you will get unexpected result.

Most commonly used web browsers are . Internet Explorer Mozila Google Chrome Opera Safari

Difference between popular web browsers

IE6 is an 8 year old piece of crap browser that is really slow on modern websites, can't show most web pages correctly, and is in general the bane of every web developer's existence. Because it comes preinstalled on Windows XP, it is the single most popular browser. IE7 is a 2 year old version of Microsoft's web browser which adds support for tabs and is slightly better at rendering web pages. It's still slow and lacks add-on support. It also has the first signs of any sort of security features. IE8 is the newest version of Microsoft's web browser. It is far more secure than previous versions and it succeeds in rendering modern web pages in a reasonable amount of time although it still has a very slow java script engine (used in web applications like Facebook, yahoo mail and gmail, Google Docs, and so on). It has several nifty features that most people probably won't use.

 Mozilla Firefox is the second most popular web browser, which is impressive because it doesn't come pre-installed on any computers (so a full quarter of people separately downloaded it). It is extremely secure .. Because it is a open source, are extremely fast at fixing any security holes they do find. It has support for a huge add-on library that can do anything from make the browser look different to give you the weather to block the ads on web pages.

Google Chrome is Google's web browser, released just over a year ago. It is the fastest browser available now by far and is also extremely secure. It isolates every tab so that no tab can crash the browser. It is gaining add-on support but does not have it yet. It is based on WebKit, which is currently the best as far as standards go. In addition to being used in Chrome, it's also used in Apple Safari as well as forming the basis of Palm's WebOS.

Opera: It is also fast and secure. It is the second fast browser. It is compatible on different Operating system. It has wide area. Safari: It is fast for video thing. Its work on Mac and window operating system. Its a standalone. It is not secure like Mozilla.

Different Type of Testing For Cross Browser

Html Validation Testing Broken link Testing Globalization Testing Security Testing Compatibility Testing Cookie Testing

HTML Validation Testing

In 1994 for W3C was created. Which defines how Web pages should be displayed by Web browsers Check the alignment of a web page on different Browser Check the Web object alignment cause different browser have different render. Check the User interface on different Web Browser. There are so many free Tools available in Internet by which we can do Html Validation.

Broken link Testing

Manually checking of Broken link of a web application or website is a tedious work. Ensure that all link work properly, and point to correct location . There are so many free tool available in on net by which we can easily do. Macromedia Dream weaver and Homesite are Html editor which offer link checking capiblites

Globalization Testing
Globalization is the process of internationalizing the website so that it supports multiple locales and cultures. The process of internationalization ensures that the application is able to process content, referred to in this universal data, for any locale with little or no change to the website. Locale is a combination of both language and cultural environment, including information such as the format of dates, times, currencies, character classification, and sorting rules for strings. Therefore, a goal of internationalization is to separate the locale-dependent content from locale-independent content. Another goal is to use code that is able to process the locale-dependent content. This ensures that the application can be easily localized for a particular culture or locale.

Security Testing
Authentication: The process of establishing the
identity of the user. Authentication can take many forms including but not limited to: passwords, biometrics, radio
frequency identification, etc.

Authorization: The process of determining that a

requester is allowed to receive a service or perform an operation. Access control is an example of authorization.

Compatibility Testing
Compatibility of your web site or web application is very important testing aspect on different browser as well as on different OS . Its depend on hardware and software configuration . 1. Browser compatibility 2. OS Compatibility 3. Printing Compatibility

 Browser compatibility:. Some applications are very dependent on browsers. Different browsers have different configurations and settings that your web page should be compatible with. Your web site coding should be cross browser platform compatible. If you are using java scripts or AJAX calls for UI functionality, performing security checks or validations then give more stress on browser compatibility testing of your web application. Test web application on different browsers like Internet explorer, Firefox, Netscape navigator, AOL, Safari, Opera browsers with different versions. OS compatibility: Some functionality in your web application is may not be compatible with all operating systems. All new technologies used in web development like graphics designs, interface calls like different APIs may not be available in all Operating Systems. Test your web application on different operating systems like Windows, Unix, MAC, Linux, Solaris with different OS flavors.

Cookie Testing
Cookie is small information stored in text file on users hard drive by web server. This information is later used by web browser to retrieve information from that machine. Two types of Cookies 1) Session cookies: This cookie is active till the browser that invoked the cookie is open. When we close the browser this session cookie gets deleted. Some time session of say 20 minutes can be set to expire the cookie. 2) Persistent cookies: The cookies that are written permanently on user machine and lasts for months or years.

How cookies are stored:

On Mozilla Firefox browser when you open the page rediff.com or login to your rediffmail account, a cookie will get written on your Hard disk. To view this cookie simply click on Show cookies button mentioned on above path. Click on Rediff.com site under this cookie list. You can see different cookies written by rediff domain with different names. Site: Rediff.com Cookie name: RMID Name: RMID (Name of the cookie) Content: 1d11c8ec44bf49e0 (Encrypted content) Domain: .rediff.com Path: / (Any path after the domain name) Send For: Any type of connection Expires: Thursday, December 31, 2020 11:59:59 PM

Testing on cookies
1) As a Cookie privacy policy make sure from your design documents that no personal or sensitive data is stored in the cookie. 2) If you have no option than saving sensitive data in cookie make sure data stored in cookie is stored in encrypted format. 3)Delete cookie: Allow site to write the cookies and then close all browsers and manually delete all cookies for web site under test. Access the web pages and check the behavior of the pages. 4) If your web application is using cookies to maintain the logging state of any user then log in to your web application using some username and password. In many cases you can see the logged in user ID parameter directly in browser address bar. Change this parameter to different value say if previous user ID is 100 then make it 101 and press enter. The proper access message should be displayed to user and user should not be able to see other users account.