For web based application, cross-browser testing is as critical as functional testing. This is especially true for consumer websites that are not limited to users within a restricted network environment and therefore will be accessed by real-time users from their favorite browsers. Today there are several major browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera with different active versions on different operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux), themselves of different versions.

Although developers verify functionality through unit testing, cross-browser testing can be very tedious and time-consuming, but here the QA engineer can play a vital role by taking over the task of verifying that a website or web application is stable across all supported browsers in different environments.

The primary idea behind cross browser testing is to ensure that the expected functionality of the application or website works across all supported browsers. It is also to ensure that the look and feel is similar (not necessarily the same) and it degrades well for older browsers or older versions of browsers without compromising on essential functionality.

Issues like broken layout, broken images, script errors, misalignment are commonly captured bugs in cross-browser testing. Cross-browser testing across different version of same browser can be easily achieved by using virtual machines containing individual versions instead of maintaining 1 real machine for individual version of browser.

There are various tools that are available in market which eases the cross browser testing. One example is BrowserStack.  Cross browser testing should not be limit just to the desktop browser versions, but these days should also be extended to verifying the web application across mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows mobile devices.

27% Visitors leave sites because of broken links, missing media or slow pages. And most do not return. Can you afford to lose 1/3 of your customers?

Ivesia’s software testing & quality assurance services ensure quality of your software, which enhances your business decisions and allows you to serve your clients better. Ivesia is committed to providing you  exceptional software test consulting & quality assurance services, whether the engagement is supplementing your in-house staff; acting as an extension of your IT team or taking complete ownership of your software QA testing team.

At Ivesia, we know that Publishing, Marketing and Corporate Communications professionals are facing common critical issues:

• An ever growing volume of online content
• Shorter lead times for incremental content updates
• A risky lack of efficiency and accuracy when publishing content

We’ve helped businesses just like yours implement content publishing solutions. One of the most successful partnerships is when Ivesia Solutions delivers content, video and media software testing services, ensuring that content is truly ready for production with rapid turn around and cost-effective programs.

Visitors leave websites because of broken links, missing media or slow pages. And most do not return. Ivesia is running a promotion for Cross Browser Compatibility Testing. Go to this link for details

http://www.ivesia.com/technology/landing-page/free-browser-compatibility-audit

Testcomplete™ can be used to automate testing of  Web & windows applications. Although TestComplete™ supports major standard controls, windows and objects in a wide variety of applications, there are some controls and windows that cannot be recognized by Test Complete directly. For example cells in few grid controls, buttons in some flash applications may not be accessible by TestComplete™. Handling TestComplete™ during such conditions makes automation little challenging.

It is possible to overcome these kinds of difficulties by using a low-level recording approach to test such applications. The main drawback of such an approach is that the script will require several changes even for a simple UI change in the application. So, creating and maintaining a stable script with this method is also not possible. Low-level Recording will be usually used in TestComplete™ for automating Testing in browsers other than IE and Firefox.  Any application that needs to be tested in other browsers (such as Google Chrome or Opera) using TestComplete™ automation needs to approach low level recording technique.

You can also look at utilizing Image recognition feature of TestComplete™. Let’s consider a test application containing a button which is unfortunately not recognized by TestComplete™. In this situation, it is possible in TestComplete™ to capture the image of this button and give it as an input for testing. TestComplete™ will search for this button using its image & recognize the button as a rectangular image object. Now we can get the position of the button and calculate X-Y coordinates of the center point of this object. By getting these coordinates, the action CLICK can be performed to trigger the click action of the mouse.

To click a button,

To enter value into a Textbox

How to find an Image in an object?

One needs to use the method named ‘Regions.Find’ inorder to find the image of object (which is not auto recognized by TestComplete™). Following is the syntax for this method

Regions.Find(PictureTosearchin, PictureToSearchFor)

This method searches for an image on other image or object. And it returns the identified rectangular image object. It has two required parameters.

• PictureToSearchin – Page or Window object, in which the object is located.
• PictureToSearchFor – This is the image name of the Test Object. This image should have been stored in Regions Items of Testcomplete™.

Consider an example to explore usage of Image Recognition in TestComplete™. The following screenshot shows an Add-on that needs to be installed from Google Chrome. User needs to click button “Add to Chrome” inorder to install add-on from Google Chrome browser.

Since Google Chrome is not currently supported by TestComplete™, we can make use of image recognition feature available in TestComplete™ to trigger the Button click action automated from Google Chrome browser, by identifying the position of the button and triggering click action on it

1)    Store the rectangular image of this button in Region items of test complete project. In the below example, Image name is stored as ‘Add_To_Chrome’

2)    To find & click this image object on chrome window, we can use the following script.

3)    This button clicks on the center position of the button.

Hence using the above script, TestComplete™ can automate the test for clicking button ‘Add to Chrome’ executed from Google Chrome browser. Using the same method, it is possible find any unrecognized object and then can perform any actions on the recognized images.

In Test Automation, Data driven frame work is a most effective frame work which gives more test coverage, with less effort.

It becomes necessary for testing an application with different test data even in automation testing.  While developing test automation for these types of application, Data-Driven frame work is best to use.

General Approach for creating data driven test:

• Record (or develop) your test scenario with a set of test data in your tool.
• Create data storage (Excel, csv or data base) and in which give multiple values for each test data.
• Replace the values in the recorded script with proper variables.
• Write script to access a set of test data from the storage, and assign it to those variables. While executing the test these values will be used.
• Make a loop statement so that the test can be executed for all set of test data.

Testcomplete™ has many in-built features to develop Data- Driven test. Testcomplete™ gives easy access to the data storages like excel, csv, data base etc. Testcomplete™ has different scripting objects & methods to retrieve data from data storage.  Even If we do not have scripting knowledge, we can use the Data-Driven Loop wizard to create Data-Driven test.

The following example demonstrates how to create data-driven test with Data-Driven Loop wizard for a key word test script.  Here we are using excel sheet as our data storage.

1)    Let us take the following key word test script. This test, logs-in into a login page by entering user name & password. Then it checks the welcome message is displayed or not.

2)    Now we will create a data driven loop for these two values (username & password) and execute this test for multiple login details. Let us say we want to execute the test using the following login details, which are stored in an excel sheet.

3)    Now select the UserNameTextbox & PasswordTextbox rows in the keyword test editor & right click on it. From the menu select ‘Make Data Loop’ option.

4)    Now it will open Data-Driven Loop window for inputting Variable name.

5)    Now select a Table type. Here we are using the excel sheet as data storage. So select the Excel Worksheet option and click Next.

6)    Browse the source excel file containing Test Data from ‘Open File’ window and click Next button.

7)    Select the sheet name in which the data are stored from list shown .Also ensure that the ‘Treat first row as column names’ check box is checked. Then click Next button.

8)    In ‘Select Records’ window choose ‘From the beginning’ and ‘To the End’ radio buttons. These two options are used to execute the test for all the rows in that sheet. If specific records only needs to used, then select record information. Click Next button.

9)    In ‘Update Values’ window assign each columns of excel sheet to each values that needs to be parameterize. In our example, for UserNameTextbox field select the User Name column and for PasswordTextbox field select the Password column of our excel sheet. Then click Finish button.

10) Now the command for Data Driven loop in the Keyword test editor will be seen.  Also username & password values would have been replaced with the corresponding table variables.

11) Now if this test runs, it will execute the login action multiple times with the data in that excel sheet & give results

Note that here each row is treated as a set of test data. I.e. test data for a single execution should be kept in the same row of the excel sheet. For a single execution, If you want to use data from multiple rows, you cannot use this method.

United Testing Initiative (UTI), a collaborative organization focused on mobile application quality and consisting of representatives from AT & T, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Samsung, Vodafone and Sony Ericsson have released the best practice guidelines for developing quality mobile applications. This can be found

here

I have culled out the user interface portion of the best practice guidelines and I have converted them into quality guidelines of mobile applications. The user interface quality guidelines of mobile applications should certainly have the following features:

• Keep the status bar hidden only when the application’s user interface is better without it
• Ensure that the back button always navigates through previously-seen screens
• Make sure navigation between application elements are easy and intuitive
• Ensure that the application uses relative layouts and device independent pixels, without making any assumptions about screen size, resolution, orientation or input.
• Check if there are any hard coding of string values in code and strictly avoid them
• Ensure the time available is comfortable for reading what is present on the screen
• Check for the font sizes and readability of it by different user groups
• Check the size of on-screen elements and its responsiveness on touch screens
• Ensure that the application UI is consistent and becomes intuitive for usage. Consistency should be ensured even when calculations or image-rendering processes are being performed
• Application speed should be given importance considering the various influencing factors like connection speed, processing power of the device and the platform needs
• Error messages displayed should be easily understandable
• 5 second test – ensure that the function progress is known to the users within 5 seconds request time in real-time environment
• Check for display consistency of applications in various formats like portrait and landscape
• Application should be devoid of spelling errors and technical text errors

This accounts for the most common user interface issues of mobile applications. Over and above this, there may be specific needs of applications that have to be addressed during the test case development process.

Mobile apps are evolving rapidly making ubiquitous information, accessible anytime and anywhere across diverse devices. This has meant an increased need for ensuring the usability of the apps on the mobile and not just the functionality of the apps. Some of the common factors that influence usability of mobile software are:

Adopting PC approaches directly for mobile software

Most programmers who work on mobile software were trained to develop software for the desktop environment. There are many standardized practices in such a development environment and programmers with relatively low usability knowledge / experience can borrow standard interfaces and libraries and create usable programs.

In the case of mobile software things have not evolved as much. Moreover, for each mobile platform, there are new set of standards, technology used is different, look and operations are also different between platforms. This adds to the complexity of mobile software while adopting desktop approaches to developing them.

Direct porting of software between different mobile and embedded platforms

It is necessary to make the mobile software support diverse mobile platforms. Just look at the complexities here, different platforms are technologically different, and the programs have to be re-developed for each of them. Interface also needs to take into account the architecture and phone models. This means the programming community needs to acquire a wide range of knowledge, which is not common place. This effectively affects the usability for same programs being migrated between platforms.

Market environment of software industry is fast paced, making more and more releases in the shortest possible time

Faster time to market is the motto of most software organizations and rightly so. However, it needs to be faster and better and not just faster. Most often than not, it is only the functionality that is given importance and the non-functional items are given a miss in the quest to release software faster to market. It is the non-functional needs like usability that assumes importance when it comes to mobile software and this has to be clearly thought-out as a part of the software release.

Lack of trained specialists in mobile software

Usability as a body of knowledge itself hasn’t gained acceptance in the software development industry. This is more so when it comes to mobile software, for things are evolving only now. There is not a common body of knowledge that sufficiently addresses the interface development needs of desktop, mobile and embedded applications. Lack of this body of knowledge means lack of trained specialists in mobile software.

Mobile web application usage is increasing by the day as the mobile penetration is multiple times larger compared to PC penetration. All businesses and organizations that are looking at leveraging the mobile medium should ensure high performance of their mobile web applications lest their end-users will move on to other providers apps.

The predominant issue with most mobile web apps is related to the speed at which the application loads. This would affect the bottom line and it becomes necessary to monitor and optimize the performance of mobile application and the supporting infrastructure for better user experience. As it is, the mobile application spectrum has a number of challenges such as the uncontrolled and unpredictable nature of web apps, limited visibility on the end-user experience, and difficulty in identifying and resolving problems.

Few things that ought to be considered while monitoring performance of mobile web apps are:

• Test functionality of the system using a desktop browser before moving to the mobile browser
• Include all stakeholders in the quality of experience process
• Test across the entire delivery chain including backend systems, content delivery servers, mobility providers, browsers and devices
• Use as much as possible real devices instead of emulators and also test them from the end-user perspective as opposed to just functionality
• Ensure that the mobile web application conforms to the best practice guidelines of UTI for mobile applications
• Automate the monitoring of mobile apps as much as possible so that issues can be resolved before it impacts the end-users. If automation is not possible, then do them at regular intervals

These would ensure that the mobile web application is optimally performing and will ensure better quality of user experience.

The answer seems obvious, or does it? After all, the application on a mobile device has the same functionality as the application on a standard desktop computer or laptop. Well, the difference is that mobile apps have to be tested for their non-functional aspects (such as usability) on mobile devices and not just primarily focused on functional testing.

There are a number of challenges that are a direct result of the unique features of mobile devices and wireless networks:

Mobile context – interaction between the users, applications and the surrounding environment that may distract user’s attention

• Connectivity – slow and unreliable wireless network connection with low bandwidth is a common hindrance for mobile applications
• Screen size – physical constraints of mobile devices, especially small screen sizes
• Display resolution – display capability of mobile devices supports much less display resolution (usually 640×480 pixels or lower) compared to PCs
• Processing capability – computational power and memory capacity of mobile devices lag far behind PCs
• Data input – providing input to small devices is difficult and limits users effectiveness in entering data

Most challenges listed above are contextual in nature and they need to be factored in properly while performing mobile testing. Most likely, testing has to be done in real-time environment and not in a laboratory environment towards minimizing the potential effects of usability in the field.

We will address the problems associated with usability of mobile application in the next post.

Website Testing

Ivesia has a good experience in testing websites in various domains like Media & Entertainment, Dating, and Digital News Media. Though testing of websites requires minimal training and knowledge about application, it requires a tester to possess the skill of testing the site from Business user’s perspective

We consider the following aspects to QA on websites

1. How user friendly is the site?
2. Testing portion of websites which integrates the websites with network community like facebook, Twitter etc.
3. How compatible is the website across various browsers?
4. Of course, any Typo or verbiage problem in page content
5. Accessing websites from iPhone using user agents or iPhone Simulator
6. Verifying Statistics information like – Total Number of Visits, unique visits to site, Traffic observed in websites
7. Verifying confirmation emails received tested in all possible mail servers like – Thunder Bird, Outlook, Outlook Express, browsers

Apart from testing the website from a business user perspective, we also perform code verification like

1. Verifying Meta tags in HTML
2. Cross verifying parameter like ipos,Tile, Org  used for Advertisement section placed on Site Rails
3. Verify if Rotating Promos or Advertisement in all pages of websites based on CMS (Content Management Systems)

Since websites requires frequent updates and enhancements it becomes vital to frequently regress sites after deployment. To my experience, a vastly accessed popular websites will have 2 -3 releases in a week. When we regress the site after deployment, we consider the following areas for regression

1. Identify the core/frequently accessed portion of websites
2. Ensure the latest implemented feature works properly
3. Ensure network community part like Fshare, Flike works properly
4. Registration  and confirmation Sections

Along with functional issues that are found when testing sites against functional specifications, common major issues that are captured during QA for websites are

1. Misalignment of Fields across browsers identified during compatibility testing
2. Raise of Script error that blocks popup screen especially in Internet Explorer

Since most users demand a high level of security on accessing websites, along with functional testing we perform security testing like manual SQL injection, on all possible user input fields and ensure no resultant pages gives hint to hackers about backend table information

Considering the drastic traffic in accessing websites, we also perform usability testing, website load test, Performance Testing for websites along with functional and regressional testing. To ensure there are no broken links in websites, in addition to Manual verification we also use link validator tool like Fiddler used during Major Release in websites

Ivesia provides long term QA services for many websites across different domains such as dating website, entertainment Media website, news media websites. Many of these websites are built on the Drupal content management system. Drupal CMS facilitates the publishing, managing and organizing wide variety of content for a website.

These are some of the features that need to be considered when testing in QA for websites built on Drupal platform:

1. Drupal offers easy content updating and management capabilities. This means that much of the content displayed on the website will come from end users, rather than the programming staff.
2. Drupal gives a precise control over the websites URL structure. Routing URLs may need to be tested.
3. Drupal has strong user role and access control functionality. We can create many custom user roles with custom access levels. For a Drupal installation, we need to understand what the custom user roles are and test for them.
4. Drupal offers many possibilities when it comes to web design. The powerful engine separates design from content, so that the look of a website can be changed quickly by applying different themes. These themes will need to be tested

Following the process below will make life easier when testing Drupal sites.

1. Identify the portion/page of the website that needs to be tested
2. Identify the module of CMS which reflects the content from CMS to website
3. Identify the user role required to change this content
4. Make changes to the content by reaching the appropriate interface and updating the related context in relevant module inside content management system
5. Select PREVIEW mode of CMS to ensure if updated changes are reflected properly in webpage
6. After conforming changes in PREVIEW, publish the content to live/original frontend webpage

With above said features, we are successfully testing Drupal websites by adhering to functional, integration and compatibility testing. We will not only test the websites with existing content but also engage ourselves by frequent update of website content. This is achieved by creating our own test data by getting to the Drupal CMS, identifying the Content field which triggers the frontend update (i.e Website Output), updating the existing field values with our test values and cross verifying the updated content from website output

We noted that a tester who has experience in testing website developed over Drupal will identify more functional bugs along with GUI bugs since the QA Engineer has control over the website content as well. One good example of such bug finding would be – There are few portions in a website which may raise alignment issues like word overlapping or text aligned over an image, only when such combination of content exists in website during testing. A tester who has not got control over creating content may not identify the issue easily unless luck favors them, but the other tester who has rights to change content through CMS will try giving various combinations of inputs in CMS and will confirm the output seen in the website is proper or has noticed any alignment issues.