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testingseleniumcross-browserfunctional-testing

Are you testing against Chrome?

I'm curious to know who is testing against Chrome.

I am mainly because it has become my primary browser, so all development is taking place on Chrome, then i test with IE and Firefox.

Solution

  • What are your browser-usage stats? You must start there. Every app's userbase is different. Rank the browsers based on those stats, and test/bug-fix in that order. That will, in most cases, give you the best bang for your time/money.

    How can you track browser usage stats? Analyze your web server's logs or use Google Analytics.

    For example, I know a B2B web app with 5000 users that have these ratios:

    • 90% IE (6,7,or 8)
    • 8% Firefox
    • 2% Chrome
    • Safari, etc are negligible

    So they should:

    • do complete full-featured tests with IE
    • test only core features and general CSS compatibility with Firefox
    • disregard other browsers

    What if they have automated testing (i.e. Selenium)? Then testing all browsers is trivial. But you could still apply my logic to browser-specific bug-fixing. That cannot be automated. And the business will have to triage what bugs get fixed.

    Certainly, this answer is subjective. Perhaps the 2%-chrome users are the highest paying users. I don't know. Consider your browser usage stats, your most important users, and the dev/QA resources available.