Why We Do Mobile Responsive Testing?
In this busy world, we do not have time to view all the websites or applications from the laptop or a desktop, instead we often want to view everything from our smart phone or tablets.
Hence, there is an immense need to build applications and websites that work in desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone, with different Operating Systems and screen sizes.
Responsive or friendly web design is mutually related to websites. Mobile responsive web design is the major key approach followed in website development to ensure the users are getting a decent viewing experience on different devices.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Safari, etc. Gives priority to mobile-friendly sites in their search results and it is important to design the website accordingly.
Spicy hot Challenges in Mobile Responsive Testing
A responsive web design alone is not sufficient to end the story, but it is equally important to test the implementation part and make sure the website is showing up the expected content clearly on all devices.
It is like we need to test all the content, videos, images, links, etc., for their appearance before releasing the website. The testing needs to be done on different browsers and operating systems and different screen sizes as well because the website may look a little different on Android OS when compared to iOS or in Windows. QA always faces big challenges in testing the responsiveness.
The common challenge:
- The combinations of screen size
- The OS versions
- The modes of the phone or tablet
- The browsers and their resolutions
It will be a bit challenging to decide the strategy and other challenges include the testing time frame, tools, test prioritization, etc.
How to Initiate Mobile Responsive Testing?
With these pointers we can decide how to test successfully:
- Testbed, Time Allocation
- Real Devices and Emulators
- Manual or Automation
- Prioritizing the Testing
Testbed
Generating matrices for the different combinations of phone sizes, browsers, operating systems, and versions is a very tedious and complicated task.
By considering these complications of the testbed, we must decide on the versions, sizes, etc. that need to be tested because you may spend a lot of time researching and strategizing the testbeds which may not be approved by your manager or Client. So as the first step, finalize the browsers and their versions common for all these devices. The same version can be tested on all forms.
Time Allocation
Not only for this testing, but we also must discuss and finalize how much time is required for the testing process and how much time is getting allocated for the testing process because responsive website testing is a very time-consuming one.
Based on this estimation, you must prepare a plan on how and what to test. Make sure that sufficient time is allocated to test all the important testbed combinations.
Real Devices and Emulators
To test so many combinations, we cannot buy all the real devices to test, so we are supposed to use the emulators and simulators.
While working on this, we must focus on versions, sizes, etc. and that should be tested on real devices,
Manual or Automation
Commonly, we have two modes of Testing i.e.) Manual and Automation. We must follow both for all possible test case Automation and Manual testing needs to be done at times. The ratio is like 65% automation and 35% manual or vice versa.
The point is clicking a small link with our fingers and with a tool are different; likewise, manually zooming on a web page and tool zooming on the page is different.
So, we need to follow both testing modes.
Prioritizing the Testing
As you all might know, it impossible to test everything in an application. Testing is a teamwork; so team members should understand and agree with the testing plan. The testing priority should be fixed well in advance by getting the suggestion from BA and Client; so that we do not have a deviation in the final output.
As a priority, the base combination of commonly used operating systems, browsers, and screen sizes need to be tested thoroughly. Based on my study, after all the issues are fixed and verified, we should do a full round of testing on the latest mobile and tablet OS.
Here are a few factors that justify the importance of testing a Mobile Responsive Website
- A superfluity of devices, OS & browsers
- Robustness
- Navigation
- Variety of Images and Videos
A superfluity of devices, OS & browsers
Viewing the content for different screen sized mobiles, tablets, operating systems, and browsers to be verified with the good quality.
Robustness
This is nothing but the time taken to load the website should be the same across all the different platforms and it should not be a slow or Time out error page on any ‘unsupported’ device or browser.
Testing Performance of the website on different platforms is an important part of mobile responsive testing.
Navigation
While testing mobile websites or apps, Navigation errors are the common defects we used to find and those are like page is not loading with the exact content that required, image is not loading, some links are missing while navigating on the website
Variety of Images and Videos
A bit difficult task is here at this point we must be very careful and verify all types of images and videos are shown correctly as expected on all platforms.
Usually, some videos, play easily in Android OS and they are not supported in iOS, Images used to be broken in some of the Mobile OS while it works perfectly on other devices. These kinds of issues will negatively impact the viewing quality of the website or application.
So, after design, the website or application mobile responsive testing is important with the other testing like functional, security, etc.
Sample Test Cases for Mobile Responsiveness Testing
As a first step, QA begins the testing process by resizing the size of the window of the mobile, tablets, browser, laptops.
While testing a mobile responsive website, here are some sample test cases for reference and ensure these are tested for all the testbed matrices:
- To check whether the content fits on the screen and is not cut out or distorted.
- To check whether the videos are loading and do not have broken links in it.
- To check whether the text color, the font, etc., remains the same.
- To check whether zooming out does not distort the web page content, images, and videos.
- To check whether fast scrolling does not distort the content.
- To check whether the links are working well and if they take the user to the appropriate page.
- To check whether the web page is not timing out or taking too long to load.
- To check whether changing from landscape to portrait mode or vice versa adjusts the content accordingly.
- To check whether the images of different types like. JPG, Ping, GIF, etc. are shown as expected.
- To check whether the links become clickable when zoomed on small screen phones.
- To check whether navigating between web pages do not distort the content etc.
Mobile Responsive Testing Tools
There are several tools available to test the responsiveness of the website both free and paid ones. While choosing the tool, consider the tool that can be used for a variety of phones, OS, browsers, etc. It will be challenging to use different tools for different types of devices, browsers, etc.
Choose the one that can cover the maximum number of the testbed.
Additional Open-source Mobile Responsive Test Tools
https://responsivedesignchecker.com/
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
http://responsivetesttool.com/
https://www.browserstack.com/responsive
SUMMARY
Mobile responsive testing is very important to ensure the best outcome of the Responsive Design of the website or Application to get all the end-users with an optimal viewing experience on their devices, may be a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, a Smartphone.
As discussed above, we can satisfy the clients and the users only if their web content content appears good in all aspects.
