Cookie
Electronic Team uses cookies to personalize your experience on our website. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our cookie policy. Click here to learn more.

Browser compatibility testing checklist

Every year, more and more digital devices are launched, each one with its own specific combination of browsers, operating system and screen resolution. This makes the job of a tester infinitely more complex.

However, thanks to cross browser testing tools like Comparium, testing across different browsers, devices and resolutions is simple. It takes a few seconds to get detailed analysis of different formats, letting you tailor your pages accordingly.

Read on to see our full browser compatibility testing checklist.

TOP CHOICE
Comparium
4.5 Rank based on 1021+ users, Reviews(250)
Article main screen

Steps to prepare for cross-browser compatibility testing

The following are the key steps in preparing for the process of cross-browser compatibility testing:
  1. Determine the amount of testing that will be necessary for your page or pages.
  2. Determine which browsers are going to be most essential for the testing.
  3. Consider which devices (mobile, tablet, etc.) are going to be essential for the testing.
  4. Set up all required browsers and devices.
  5. Start your compatibility test.
Try testing for free right now
Comparium is your choice

Find out website testing checklist

We'll cover the cross-browser testing checklist below.

A number of things need to be taken into consideration when starting website testing. The following is our guide to the essentials of browser compatibility testing checklist details. As you can see, we’ve divided the list into three main categories.

First is general compatibility, focusing on a range of basic features crucial to the page. Second is design and layout, focusing on visual aspects. The third is functional, focusing on back office aspects. Read on for our browser compatibility testing guide.

Browser general compatibility testing checklist

  • Validate CSS, HTML and XHTML, ensuring that all definitions comply with necessary standards.
  • Validate SSL certificate, ensuring that you own the domain you are using.
  • Validate client forms and fields and web pages, both with and without Javascript.
  • View web pages on a range of different screens.
  • Check DOCTYPE instructions on every page.
  • Ensure APIs have crossbrowser compatibility.
  • Check X-UA-Compatibility tag.

Browser compatibility testing checklist of layout and design

  • Ensure there is consistency of style, layout and design across all browsers used.
  • Ensure all images are in standard resolution and necessary alignment across all different browsers and OS used.
  • Ensure fonts are implemented, and consistent in size, colour etc. across all browsers used.
  • Ensure all boxes and forms are correctly aligned across different browsers.
  • Ensure colours are uniform across all different browsers.
  • Ensure headers and footers are uniform.
  • Check responsiveness of site on different browsers.
  • Check alignment of data.
  • Ensure spacing of text and other elements is correct and uniform across browsers.
  • Check browser compatibility for number of formats used to support audio and video.
  • Check scroll bars.
  • Check coding for any special characters used.
  • Check zoom functions.
  • Check any mouse hover elements and tips.
  • Check drop down fields.
  • Check navigation between pages is smooth and accurate.
  • Check display of pop-ups, and uniformity across browsers.
  • Check alignment of tables and grids.

Browser functionality compatibility testing checklist

  • Check plugins are supported by all browsers.
  • Check formats of downloading and uploading.
  • Check functionality of jQuery and Ajax.
  • Ensure that navigation links function correctly, search results are accurate, and error pages occur when necessary.
  • Check validation for fields and forms on each browser used.
  • Check different functions on forms are working correctly ie. saving data, importing and exporting, submission.
  • Check flash is working, and that any animations function correctly across browsers.
  • Check that device interaction (keyboard, mouse) is uniform across different browsers.
  • Check script validation across different browsers.
  • Check ability to handle different loads on different browsers.

Comparium - great tool for browser compatibility testing

Comparium

4.5 Rank based on 1021 + users Reviews (250)
Requirements: Chrome, Mozila Firefox, Opera, Safari, Edge, IE-11
Category: Online service

All of the above browser compatibility testing checklist details tell you exactly what you need to know about browser compatibility testing. And for our money, there’s no program better for carrying out these functions than Comparium.

Comparium has been custom-designed to provide QA testers with everything they need to ensure uniformity and top quality across browsers, operating systems and different resolutions. It can emulate screen types for a huge range of different devices, letting you try thousands of different combinations to ensure that your page appears in the highest quality possible.

You can see how it looks in the current screenshot.

Thanks to both automatic and manual testing, as well as simultaneous screenshot comparison, you can check every single feature of your web pages. As we’ve explained above, within the three basic categories of testing (general, layout and functional) there are many different features you need to check before you can confidently send you page live.

Combined with our website testing checklist Comparium can take the work out of a large chunk of that testing, letting you quickly optimise across different platforms and iron out any minor discrepancies that need to be dealt with. And thanks to regular updates, Comparium is constantly improving, providing users with more and more useful features to get the best out of their webpages.

Web page testing isn’t an easy business. We’ve all encountered pages where even the smallest of errors gives us a poor opinion of the goods and services we’re considering. That said, with the right tools, you can easily cut down your work by a huge amount. The above checklists give you a detailed rundown of everything you need to check before you send a page live.

And thanks to intuitive tools like Comparium, all it takes is a few clicks to ensure that you’re presenting the best possible version of your page to the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

When you compare Cross Browser Testing vs Browserstack, we’re competent that a choice like Comparium comes out on top. It lets you test your webpage browser compatibility across a range of different browsers, operating systems and resolutions.

All you need to do is take your pick of browsers from the selection, and start running tests in either manual or automatic. You can get detailed information on any discrepancies, and make changes accordingly.

This very much depends on exactly how you’re testing. The breakdown of general, layout and functionality in our browser compatibility testing checklist gives you a good template for testing browser compatibility cases.

Essentially, you want to ensure uniformity of reporting across browsers, checking the same features and aspects for each browser. Divide your test cases into major categories, broken down into various subcategories, and ensure that you rely on concrete data rather than your general impressions.

The majority of issues with browser compatibility issues come down to coding. If you find that your webpage is encountering these problems, check the HTML coding and other coding on different browsers and ensure that your code is optimised according to best practice for each browser. If you continue encountering problems, use an advanced testing tool or manual cross browser testing to provide you with information on the discrepancies, and alter your webpage accordingly.

If you want to ensure full functionality with cross browser testing, you should test your website in all major browsers. As a bare minimum, this will mean Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. It’s also worth checking in Opera, as this is becoming a more and more popular choice due to its accessibility and open source code.

Beyond this, there are other less mainstream browsers that are worth paying attention to. However, as we say, for the bare minimum these four browsers are the most important ones.

Comparium

A powerful tool for visual and functional testing of sites

Product block illustration