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“It works on my browser!” is the new “It works on my machine!”

“It works on my browser!” is the new “It works on my machine!”

Matthias Zax - Agile Engineering Coach at Raiffeisen Bank International AG

Imagine, you have spent a lot of time and money in developing a high-quality web application. If you don’t want to be surprised after releasing your application to the market, you have to take care that the application works in your target audience’s most used browsers. Therefore, not only function tests are required, but also interoperability tests must be considered in your test strategy.

INTEROPERABILITY TESTING is a software testing type, that checks whether the software can interact with other software components and systems without any compatibility issues. In your case, you must consider Cross-browser compatibility testing.

Cross-browser compatibility testing has been gaining a lot of traction in recent years and there is a reason for it. While technology is evolving rapidly, people aren’t. A significant amount of people are resistant to changes, or more specifically, “have an aversion to upgrading their tech”. In this scenario, it’s browser compatibility testing that enables companies to ensure that no customer is left behind or has an experience that is not desired. So even though browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox dominate the market, there are people using their older versions, or other browsers. And their numbers are too high to be ignored. This phänomän is called browser fragmentation.

It is important to choose the right combination of web browsers and operating systems for testing. There is usually a trade-off between test cost and range. Therefore, this entire exercise is finding the right balance - testing with minimal browsers/devices to ensure that the maximum number of people can use the application.

By virtualizing test resources using browser clouds, the problem of ever-increasing browser fragmentation (browser type, platform, OS version) and the question of interoperability can be effectively and efficiently solved.

This talk uses a practical example to show what needs to be considered when designing the test strategy from an organizational perspective (non-functional requirements, browser policy, browser test strategy, browser test coverage, …) and how the cross-browser tests were integrated into the continuous delivery pipelines by using browser device clouds.

Bio

Matthias Zax works as an agile engineering coach at Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI). Originally a trained software developer and “#developerByHeart”, he has focused on testing software specialized on test automation in the DevOps environment since 2018 and organizes the RBI Test Automation Community of Practice.

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