compatibility testing
July 18, 2024

Unlocking Better App Quality Through Compatibility Testing

Mobile Application Testing

To create high-quality applications, testing and dev teams must perform a wide variety of tests to ensure quality and a seamless user experience. One important aspect of testing is to ensure that your application runs consistently, regardless of which device, framework, browser, or platform it is accessed from.  

This is where compatibility testing comes in.

In this blog, we will explore the ins and outs of compatibility testing, including key benefits and approaches to compatibility testing — and how it leads to better quality applications. 

 

What Is Compatibility Testing?

Compatibility testing is a process that ensures a software application can run across all types of hardware, operating systems, devices, environments, browsers, networks, and more. Compatibility testing helps determine that an application functions as intended, no matter how or where it is run. 

 

Related Reading: Test Smarter, Not Harder: A Guide to Efficient Testing

 

Compatibility Testing Overview

Compatibility tests are performed to test whether an application can fulfill its functions, regardless of the browser, device, or operating system on which it is run. Because there are numerous browsers, devices, and OSs available, testing teams must test their application against all available options to ensure peak functionality. 

Here is a quick overview of the key functions of compatibility testing:

  • Check an application’s compatibility across all browsers, devices, OSs, networks, databases, and environments to ensure peak functionality.
  • Detect bugs and glitches in an application that may appear in one browser/device/environment, etc. and not another.
  • Analyze the application’s behavior across environments.
  • Determine where the application needs enhanced security testing, functional testingaccessibility testing, etc.  
  • Ensure the delivery of error-free applications that function across environments.

 

Related Reading: Everything You Need to Know About Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing

 

The Importance of Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is a crucial component of the testing process, as it ultimately helps ensure a smooth user experience, regardless of how a user is interacting with your application. 

The following are some of the main benefits of compatibility testing:

1.  Improves the Software Development Process

Compatibility testing can detect issues in the application or software during the software development life cycle, not just in the finished product. Detecting potential issues early on allows for teams to easily shift testing left. It also makes it easier to ensure usability, accessibility, and stability across platforms, browsers, and devices and prepare the application for release. 

2. Detects Bugs Early On

Compatibility testing ensures that bugs and glitches are caught early in the software development life cycle. By catching errors early on, compatibility testing helps increase testing velocity, saving teams both time and money.

3. Optimizes User Experience

Compatibility testing helps with user experience by ensuring that your application runs smoothly, no matter the browser, device, or operating system. Compatibility testing ensures that your application runs the same on any device—so all users enjoy the same experience and level of service.

4. Ensures Smooth Application Launch

When combined with functional and non-functional testingaccessibility testingUX testingregression testingsmoke testing, and more, compatibility testing helps ensure that your application runs as smoothly as possible—from launch and beyond. 

 

Related Reading: The 10 Toughest Mobile Testing Challenges

 

How to Do Compatibility Testing

Now that we have covered what compatibility testing is and why it is so important to the development of high-quality applications, we will take a closer look at the steps involved in compatibility testing.

The following steps outline how to perform compatibility testing to ensure better quality apps:

1. Create and Configure Test Cases

In the first phase of compatibility testing, testing and dev teams design test cases. This includes selecting the preferred combination of environments, platforms, software, and hardware on which to test so they can see how the application performs. Many of these tests will be run to ensure that all platforms, devices, and environments are tested.

2. Set Up Your Test Environment

In the next step of compatibility testing, teams will set up and configure the tests designed in stage 1. They will often include various combinations of test environments, browsers, devices, and more. 

3. Run Tests and Analyze Results

In the third phase of compatibility testing, once the environments are set up, teams will run the tests and then analyze the results. The compatibility test cases are thoroughly examined to detect any bugs or errors that occurred during the tests. These errors will need to be addressed before further testing can take place. Teams will often submit these results to stakeholders.

The following are some examples of common issues uncovered during compatibility testing:

  • Discrepancies in the user interface (UI).
  • Changes in font size.
  • Changes in CSS.
  • Issues with alignment and overlapping.
  • Scrolling issues.
  • Broken tables, frames, etc.

 4. Resolve Issues and Rerun Tests

Once the tests have been run and any bugs have been identified and addressed, a report is submitted for further study and the bugs are then resolved. Once resolved, the team will re-run compatibility testing to ensure the bugs were removed and the application runs smoothly across platforms, etc. If any new bugs are detected, the process will be repeated until the application runs without error across platforms. 

 

Related Reading: How to Make the Most of Your Perfecto Free Trial

 

Bottom Line

When it comes to compatibility testing—and all other forms of testing, for that matter—Perfecto is your go-to partner. Know why tests failed and fix them quickly with Perfecto’s comprehensive test reporting and analytics feature. See all your test results in one unified place — including a CI dashboard, heatmaps, and individual test reports. 

Perfecto can help you leverage compatibility testing across platforms, browsers, devices, and more — all while helping you test more, faster. 

When you test your apps with Perfecto, you will experience:

  • Unified testing
  • Advanced automation.
  • Full toolchain integration.
  • All results in one place.
  • Accelerated testing.
  • Shift Testing Left.

See Perfecto in action and start regression testing today by signing up for a free 14-day trial.

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