Improving Web Quality Assurance

More than 10 years after the web browser was invented, and after almost as much time spent creating standards, designing web applications with consistent display across different web browsers is still more art than science. Some products deal with this issue by limiting their 'supported' browsers to one or two, but this limits consumer choice, and defeats many of the reasons for building web-based applications in the first place.

For mainstream web based applications, compatibility with a variety of browsers, on many operating systems is a requirement. Yet testing against these systems - especially as product release dates approach, can require a massive amount of manpower. Your Web QA team needs automation!

The Koders team recently shared with me a fantastic tool for web-based look & feel QA: BrowserCam. Browser cam is a very clever web-based application, simply enter a public URL, select the operating systems and browsers you'd like to see the page displayed in, and you're off. In just a couple of minutes, BrowserCam will load your page on many target systems and post all the screenshots for your review.

This tool is more than worth its nominal fees for any team that is faced with pre-launch anxiety, post-launch headaches, and the general fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD) caused by (sometimes very small) CSS changes.

BrowserCam is a great tool to help accelerate look & feel inconsistencies, but doesn't deal with web application workflow - another troubling area primed for automation tools. Stay tuned for a future post tackling this topic.