Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a term that was defined by Ethan Marcotte in 2010 according to which, design and development of web pages should be responsive to different screen size, platform, and orientation. Basically, the idea was to create web pages that look good on all devices and size screens.
Earlier, people only had a desktop and a limited number of browsers to surf the internet. Today, 50 percent of web page views worldwide come from mobile devices. Due to this, having a website which works on mobile was used to be an advantage for the businesses, but it has become a necessity now to survive in a highly competitive market. Responsive web design is crucial for businesses to make sure that their website is optimized for different screen sizes and resolutions.
Here are the three key components of responsive web design –
1. Layout: Layout is the first thing to look at while building a responsive website so that it can easily be resized to any width dynamically
2. Media: The next important aspect of a fully responsive website is media, i.e. images or videos. It is crucial to ensure that the media change their size or resolution according to the requirement
3. Typography: Typography is another important part which is usually ignored by the developers. The font size should be related to the width of its parent container to be easily adaptable and readable on mobile devices
Testing Responsive Web Design
We are living in a world, where we all are using smart devices which means any user can access any website from anywhere via their devices. As responsive web design is critical for the enterprises, responsive testing is equally important to verify that your web applications are visually and functionally working smoothly on different browsers.
Here are a few key things that you should test under browser testing:
- HTML validation
- CSS validation
- Ajax and Jquery functionality
- Page layout in different resolutions
- Page and Font size validations
- Image and page content alignment
- Date formats
- Header and footer sections
In order to ensure that the code and design choices you have made don’t affect the users negatively, cross-browser testing is crucial.
Manually testing across all the test environments consumes a lot of time and resources. Also, it is next to impossible to implement Continuous Testing and Continuous Delivery with the manual testing only.
If you want that it doesn’t impact your deadline, it is best to use an automated cross browser testing tool.
Using a Cross Browser Testing Tool
Cross browser testing is challenging for a software tester. Some of the main challenges in testing cross browser compatibility include:
1. Lack of testing on real devices
2. Vendor-Specific functions
3. HTML/CSS Validation
4. Faulty rendering issues
5. Layout compatibility issues
But there are several cross browser testing tools available in the market which fight these challenges and reduce your testing efforts. The tools give you the viewing experience of your website without using an actual device.
They provide you with the devices along with their viewport sizes for verifying the responsiveness of your web application on different browsers.
You have to input your website, select the devices of your choice and you can see how your website is responding on your selected device. Cross-browser testing tools are very helpful when you are starting your testing, gathering all the ideas creating scenarios, and the different areas you need to focus on.
Each cross-browser testing tool comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. It is wise to select a tool based on your requirements.
How Testsigma Does it?
Testsigma, a cross browser testing tool, is a one-stop platform for all your cross-browser testing needs. It allows you to check your web application on 2000+ real and desktop, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge browsers.
With no coding skills required, it lets you write automated testing in simple English and automate your tests five times faster. Additionally, with its cloud-based test lab, you can create plenty of different test environments and execute them in parallel to save time and effort and get quick feedback.
It also provides seamless CI/CD integrations for Agile and Continuous Delivery teams to integrate as part of the delivery pipeline. It meets all your end-to-end testing requirements to make your cross-browser testing easier and efficient.
Easily automate your tests and execute them on 2050+ mobile devices and browsers in parallel
