| It's time to get back to what you can do, today, to test a web page. Recall from Chapters 8, "Configuration Testing," and 9, "Compatibility Testing," what configuration and compatibility testing are. Configuration testing is the process of checking the operation of your software with various types of hardware and software platforms and their different settings. Compatibility testing is checking your software's operation with other software. Web pages are perfect examples of where you can apply this type of testing. Assume that you have a website to test. You need to think about what the possible hardware and software configurations might be that could affect the operation or appearance of the site. Here's a list to consider: Hardware Platform. Is it a Mac, PC, PDA, MSNTV, or a WiFi wristwatch? Each hardware device has its own operating system, screen layout, communications software, and so on. Each can affect how the website appears onscreen. Browser Software and Version. There are many different web browsers and browser versions. Some run on only one type of hardware platform, others run on multiple platforms. Some examples are AOL 9.0, Firefox 1.0, Internet Explorer 5.0 and 6.0, Pocket IE, Netscape 7.2, and Opera 7.54. Each browser and version supports a different set of features. A website may look great under one browser and not display at all under another. Web designers can choose to design a site using the least common denominator of features so that it looks the same on all of them, or write specialized code to make the site work best on each one. They may even choose to only support a few of the most popular browsers. How would this impact your testing? Browser Plug-Ins. Many browsers can accept plug-ins or extensions to gain additional functionality. An example of this would be to play specific types of audio or video files. Browser Options. Most web browsers allow for a great deal of customization. Figure 14.7 shows an example of this. You can select security options, choose how ALT text is handled, decide what plug-ins to enable, and so on. Each option has potential impact on how your website operatesand, hence, is a test scenario to consider. Figure 14.7. This example shows how configurable the Internet Explorer web browser is. 
Video Resolution and Color Depth. Many platforms can display in various screen resolutions and colors. A PC running Windows, for example, can have screen dimensions of 640x480, 800x600, 1,024x768, 1280x1024, and up. Mobile devices have tiny screens with very different resolutions. Your website may look different, or even wrong, in one resolution, but not in another. Text and graphics can wrap differently, be cut off, or not appear at all. The number of colors that the platform supports can also impact the look of your site. PCs typically support as few as 256 colors and as many as 232. Could your website be used on a mobile system with only 16 colors? Text Size. Did you know that a user can change the size of the text used in the browser? Could your site be used with very small or very large text? What if it was being run on a small screen, in a low resolution, with large text? Modem Speeds. Enough can't be said about performance. Someday everyone will have high-speed connections with website data delivered as fast as you can view it. Until then, you need to test that your website works well at a wide range of modem speeds.
If you consider all the possibilities outlined here, testing even the simplest website can become a huge task. It's not enough that the website looks good on your PCif you want to ensure that it works well for its intended audience, you need to research the possible configurations they might have. With that information, you can create equivalence partitions of the configurations you feel are most important to test. A good place to start your research is www.websidestory.com and www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm. These sites have frequently updated surveys related to technology, browsers, video resolutions, etc. These are a great first step in deciding what configurations are popular and which direction they are trending. |
