What shapes a person - nature or nurture? All said and done, the environment in which a person is nurtured, has a tremendous impact on the person's nature, IQ and all other aspects. Software is no exception to this. The environment in which it runs, determines the behavior of the software. Let us see the list of items that affect a software from the environment angle. We can broadly divide this into client side compatibility and server side compatibility.
Let us first take the client side compatibility. This is where the end customer sees your product. The Operating System. This is the ultimate controller of a physical computer. Assume that we develop a product in Windows XP, compile it in Windows XP and test it in Windows XP. There is a very high probability that it will work fine. When we install the same product in Windows Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8, what is the guarantee it will work the same way it did in Win XP? Absolutely no guarantee. But, we cannot predict the customer's operating environment. So, it is our responsibility to test the product in different versions of the same OS family. Usually, we need to test the product in the latest, latest - 1, latest - 2 versions of the OS.
If you carefully look at the operating system releases, you will notice service packs (SP), and HotFixes (HF). These are patches applied to the OS itself. If I had tested the product in OS + SP1, and if there is a new SP2 release, in order to ensure the quality of the product in that environment, we need to test our product again in OS + SP2 combination.
With internet penetration to every nook and corner, browser war is always on. The top companies compete to gain browser share. Hence browser is the primary interface to end users. If a product is tested in Internet Explorer (IE), if customers prefer Firefox (FF) or Chrome, then it is mandatory to test the product across different browsers. The way each browser handles html/xml/json etc., the rendering may differ slightly. But when the alignment or rendering gets affected, the end user experience differs.
Now, to put a bigger bomb, what about testing the product in WinXP and IE 8, Win7 and IE 9, Win8 and Firefox 12 combination? The OS-Browser pair along with OS-Browser versions, the validation matrix will be huge. Do we need to worry about this large matrix? If your end customer uses one such combination, and if that person spends 1000s of dollars on your eCom portal, will you not take effort to make it work? The more combinations you test, the more market share you can gain, as it covers a large customer base.
With lot of different PCs, laptops, models coming up with different screen size and resolutions, consumer facing application such as online shopping portal etc., we need to test with different screen resolutions. A simple vertical or horizontal scroll bar may irritate the end user. That one small dislike may make the user leave your product.
The compatibility tests are large. You execute the same functional test cases, but on different environments. This takes more time and needs more people. But now, we have a lot of tools on cloud to automatically setup such combinations of environments. This will help you to test faster. You can see browserstack.com as an example. There are many providers like this, it is up to you to make the choice, that suits you better.
For video lessons, please visit www.openmentor.net.
Let us first take the client side compatibility. This is where the end customer sees your product. The Operating System. This is the ultimate controller of a physical computer. Assume that we develop a product in Windows XP, compile it in Windows XP and test it in Windows XP. There is a very high probability that it will work fine. When we install the same product in Windows Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8, what is the guarantee it will work the same way it did in Win XP? Absolutely no guarantee. But, we cannot predict the customer's operating environment. So, it is our responsibility to test the product in different versions of the same OS family. Usually, we need to test the product in the latest, latest - 1, latest - 2 versions of the OS.
If you carefully look at the operating system releases, you will notice service packs (SP), and HotFixes (HF). These are patches applied to the OS itself. If I had tested the product in OS + SP1, and if there is a new SP2 release, in order to ensure the quality of the product in that environment, we need to test our product again in OS + SP2 combination.
With internet penetration to every nook and corner, browser war is always on. The top companies compete to gain browser share. Hence browser is the primary interface to end users. If a product is tested in Internet Explorer (IE), if customers prefer Firefox (FF) or Chrome, then it is mandatory to test the product across different browsers. The way each browser handles html/xml/json etc., the rendering may differ slightly. But when the alignment or rendering gets affected, the end user experience differs.
Now, to put a bigger bomb, what about testing the product in WinXP and IE 8, Win7 and IE 9, Win8 and Firefox 12 combination? The OS-Browser pair along with OS-Browser versions, the validation matrix will be huge. Do we need to worry about this large matrix? If your end customer uses one such combination, and if that person spends 1000s of dollars on your eCom portal, will you not take effort to make it work? The more combinations you test, the more market share you can gain, as it covers a large customer base.
With lot of different PCs, laptops, models coming up with different screen size and resolutions, consumer facing application such as online shopping portal etc., we need to test with different screen resolutions. A simple vertical or horizontal scroll bar may irritate the end user. That one small dislike may make the user leave your product.
The compatibility tests are large. You execute the same functional test cases, but on different environments. This takes more time and needs more people. But now, we have a lot of tools on cloud to automatically setup such combinations of environments. This will help you to test faster. You can see browserstack.com as an example. There are many providers like this, it is up to you to make the choice, that suits you better.
For video lessons, please visit www.openmentor.net.
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