Users can access your website or apps from a variety of devices in today’s world, which is full of new operations coming out every day. End-users can use as many platforms as they want. While your creator devotes too much time and effort to create the right solution – whether it’s a website or an app. It is important that the solution reflects the needs of real-world users who will use the system in the long run.
If you’re creating a mobile app, it can be used on a variety of mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, which come with a variety of screen sizes and platforms. Web apps can also be accessed using a variety of browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Delivering a product with a diverse customer base is a challenge for a test manager. An application cannot be checked on every possible computer, operating system, or configuration; however, testing on a few of them can help you find problems or issues in the majority of platforms.
1. What is Cross-Platform Testing
An application must run equally well (ideally perfectly) on all types of computer and mobile platforms and/or operating systems, such as Windows, iOS, Android, Macintosh, Chrome OS, and so on, in order to pass cross-platform testing. If you want to ensure good results across all possible channels where your app will be used, you’ll need to cover a lot of ground. Cross-platform testing identifies all potential caching problems as well as the behavior of your smartphone or web app in various environments and devices. It allows you to see the software product in more detail and separately, avoids functional failures, and also improves the overall usability of the app.
2. Importance of Cross-Platform Testing
Cross-platform testing is an essential part of the quality assurance process. The number of platforms available when a product is built for multiple platforms is limitless. When it comes to web applications, in spite of new versions of operating systems still old browsers are widely used , but when it comes to desktop applications, the number of OS and configurations is enormous, so covering all of them is not easy. Cross-platform testing is used to figure out how the software and website behave in various settings. Cross-platform testing aids in the identification of problems such as compatibility, user interface, usability, and performance that may differ across systems or configurations.
For example, in Chrome Browser, the website’s user interface may be right, but the layout may be messed up in Internet Explorer. Similarly, an Android application that works fine on Pie but not on Lollipop will not support lollipop devices. Only when cross-platform testing is performed during the testing process will these types of problems be detected.
3. How Can Cross-Platform Testing Be Planned
Cross-platform testing can be tricky to perform if you don’t plan it beforehand. Aside from that, if the specifications for cross-platform functionality are not clearly communicated to developers and testers, the software can fail because it is only good for one platform or configuration.
Take a look at the following points to see if they can assist you in developing cross-platform testing.
3.1. Get to Know Your Audience
The core concept of testing is to think like an end-user and build use cases that a typical user will use to carry out their tasks. You should have a clear understanding of who will be the most devoted users of your app, as well as what devices and channels they will most often use. To get things under control, get a hold of some statistics. This will help you in deciding what platforms or devices should be focused on cross-platform testing.
3.2. Select Supporting Platforms
Once you’ve gotten to know your user base, the next move is to figure out which platform to help or how the solution will be implemented, all while keeping your user base in mind. If your user base shows that the majority of your users will be from Western countries, the dedicated platform can be iOS.
3.3. The Possibility of Automation
In the end, testing an application on various platforms and combinations is tedious work. Occasionally, testers develop tunnel vision and are unable to detect clear flaws. They can lose interest in testing the same thing on various platforms or environments at other times. Automation is ideal in such situations. Many automation tools exist that allow you to run an application on multiple platforms while saving a significant amount of time. While these automation tools are life-saving, they cannot always assess the full functionality of applications, so manual testing is still needed.
3.4. Invest in Emulator Software
Buying multiple devices and gadgets can be very expensive. Emulators and virtualization are the best options for performing cross-platform testing across multiple environments. To test applications, you can create your own virtual machines with a variety of platforms and configuration options. You can also use emulators to test your application’s behavior on mobile devices with different screen sizes.
4. Problems with Cross-Platform Testing
During the testing process of a product that is being designed for different platforms, several problems arise. As stated in the previous section, planning for cross-platform testing is an essential part of the software testing life cycle. In this segment, we’ll go through some of the most common issues that cross-platform testers face:
4.1. Consistency in the User Interface
It’s important for an application that’s supposed to run on multiple platforms to have a consistent design interface. Such a template should be created so that there are no alignment problems or excessive text wrapping on the user interface. Such problems leave a negative impact on consumers, and interest rapidly dwindles. For example, an eCommerce website’s browser use cap is unrestricted. The UI architecture should be consistent enough to prevent issues with the user interface, such as unreadable font sizes, excessive text wrapping, and so on.
4.2. Configuration of Inputs
A user interface with too many buttons is meant to be complicated and unfriendly. It’s important to understand how end-users will communicate with the system and what kind of feedback they want. Text boxes are favored in financial applications, but if the user is presented with dropdowns and buttons, it would be difficult for them to use the program.
4.3. Data Storage
If your application uses a lot of data, then it may cause trouble for devices with low cache and RAM. Keeping in view the device’s usability is also important. For example, Android phone users prefer small-size applications that don’t occupy much space in their devices.
Conclusion
Tools save time and effort and also prove to be good in resource and task management to handle Cross-platform testing. With time, the features are improving more and more, new tools are adding up in the list with new and advanced options.
For more than 5 years, businesses around the world have relied on TestDel’s independent software testing services and experience to achieve faster time to market, higher returns on investments (ROI), and improved efficiency in their overall QA initiatives. Connect with our experts to improve the pace and agility of your QA processes with the most cutting-edge research concept.