How to Test Responsive Web Design Cross Browser Compatibility

How to Check Responsive Website in Chrome?

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a term that was defined by Ethan Marcotte in 2010, according to which design and development of web pages should be responsive to different screen sizes, platforms, and orientations. It was about how to make a website with good web pages on all devices and size screens.

Earlier, people only had a desktop and a limited number of browsers to surf the internet. Today, 50 percent of web page views worldwide come from mobile devices. Due to this, having a website that works on mobile used to be an advantage for businesses, but it has become a necessity now to survive in a highly competitive market. Responsive web design is crucial for companies to optimize their website for different screen sizes and resolutions.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design is an approach to designing and creating websites optimized for viewing on different devices with different screen sizes. It is achieved through flexible layouts, images, and media queries that adapt the layout and content of the website to the user’s screen size. For example, a responsive website might display a three-column layout on a desktop but switch to a single-column layout on mobile. By using responsive web design techniques, websites can provide a consistent and user-friendly experience regardless of the device used to view the website. 

Responsive web design helps you to avoid:

1. If you have a separate mobile site for your web design, you risk creating duplicate content that can affect search engine rankings.

2. It can be difficult to update the desktop and mobile sites, which can take time and effort.

3. A separate mobile site can give users a bad experience by not providing all the features available on the desktop site.

4. A separate mobile site can be more expensive to deploy and maintain than a responsive website 

Key Components of Responsive Web Design

Here are the three key components of responsive web design – 

1. Layout: Layout is the first thing to look at while building a responsive website so that it can easily be resized to any width dynamically
2. Media: The next important aspect of a fully responsive website is media, i.e. images or videos. It is crucial to ensure that the media change their size or resolution according to the requirement
3. Typography: Typography is another important part which is usually ignored by the developers. The font size should be related to the width of its parent container to be easily adaptable and readable on mobile devices



Importance of Responsive Design Testing

Responsive design testing is critical in today’s environment when people view websites on a wide range of devices with varying screen sizes and resolutions. We ensure your website shows and functions correctly on all devices, offering the optimum user experience. Responsive design testing also aids in identifying and correcting flaws in website layout, content, and functioning. This enables firms to reach more customers and boost their online visibility.

Testing Responsive Web Design

We are living in a world, where we all are using smart devices which means any user can access any website from anywhere via their devices. As responsive web design is critical for the enterprises, responsive testing is equally important to verify that your web applications are visually and functionally working smoothly on different browsers.

Here are a few key things that you should test under browser testing:

  • HTML validation
  • CSS validation
  • Ajax and Jquery functionality
  • Page layout in different resolutions
  • Page and Font size validations
  • Image and page content alignment
  • Date formats
  • Header and footer sections

In order to ensure that the code and design choices you have made don’t affect the users negatively, cross-browser testing is crucial.

Manually testing across all the test environments consumes a lot of time and resources. Also, it is next to impossible to implement Continuous Testing and Continuous Delivery with the manual testing only.

If you want that it doesn’t impact your deadline, it is best to use an automated cross browser testing tool. 

Using a Cross Browser Testing Tool

Cross browser testing is challenging for a software tester. Some of the main challenges in testing cross browser compatibility include:

1. Lack of testing on real devices

2. Vendor-Specific functions

3. HTML/CSS Validation

4. Faulty rendering issues

5. Layout compatibility issues

But there are several cross browser testing tools available in the market which fight these challenges and reduce your testing efforts. The tools give you the viewing experience of your website without using an actual device.
They provide you with the devices along with their viewport sizes for verifying the responsiveness of your web application on different browsers.

You have to input your website, select the devices of your choice and you can see how your website is responding on your selected device. Cross-browser testing tools are very helpful when you are starting your testing, gathering all the ideas creating scenarios, and the different areas you need to focus on.

Each cross-browser testing tool comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. It is wise to select a tool based on your requirements.

Testing Responsiveness Using Chrome Developer Tools

To test responsiveness using Chrome Developer Tools:

  • Go to the website you wish to test in Google Chrome.
  • Choose Inspect from the context menu by right-clicking anywhere on the web page.
  • This will launch the Chrome developer tools. Toggle the device toolbar by clicking the Toggle Device Toolbar icon in the top left corner of the window or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + M (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + M (Mac).
  • This toggles the view to responsive mode, allowing you to preview how your website will appear on various devices. You may test how your site works on different screen sizes by selecting a device from the dropdown list or adjusting the screen resolution.
  • You may also test the responsiveness of your website by rotating the screen orientation.
  • Inspect your CSS and HTML code using inspection tools and make the required modifications to make your website completely responsive.
  • After testing, click the Toggle Device Toolbar button again or use the same keyboard shortcut to leave responsive mode.

Testing Responsiveness Using the Testsigma Platform

Testsigma, a cross-browser testing tool, is a one-stop platform for all your cross-browser testing needs. It allows you to check your web application on 2000+ real and desktop, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge browsers.

With no coding skills required, it lets you write automated testing in simple English and automate your tests five times faster. Additionally, with its cloud-based test lab, you can create and execute many test environments in parallel to save time and effort and get quick feedback.

It also provides seamless CI/CD integrations for Agile and Continuous Delivery teams to integrate into the delivery pipeline. It meets all your end-to-end testing requirements to make your cross-browser testing more accessible and more efficient.

Test Mobile and Web app’s compatibility across 3000+ platforms, OS, and browser combinations in parallel

Conclusion

In conclusion, responsive design testing is crucial to website testing since it guarantees that your website appears and operates appropriately across all devices. Chrome developer tools make it simple and easy to evaluate website responsiveness, assisting developers in identifying and correcting issues with layout, content, or functionality. On the other hand, automating the testing process saves time and costs. It guarantees its websites are entirely responsive and optimized for all devices using a complete testing solution like Testsigma

Frequently Asked Questions

How Can I Test my Website Responsiveness?

Test the browser responsiveness it is required to use of a browser testing tool because it requires testing whether or not a website it accessible in all combinations of operating systems and browsers. A responsiveness testing tool will run a website in various combinations of operating systems and browsers and ensures it’s accessible.   

How Can I Test my is Website Mobile Responsive?

To test whether your website is mobile responsive or not you have to perform cross-browser compatibility testing. In cross-browser compatibility testing, a testing tool like Testsigma is used which tests your website in various combinations of operating and browsers. During the testing process layout, alignment, and accessibility of the website will be getting tested to ensure it’s responsive on all mobile devices.        

Is Compatibility Testing and Cross-Browser Testing Same?

Cross-bowser testing is the subset of compatibility testing, it is performed during the process of compatibility testing. Compatibility testing shows how our website works with various hardware and software, whereas cross-browser testing is about ensuring our website is responsive in all combinations of operating systems and browsers. 

Can We Do Responsive Web Design Testing Using Selenium?

Yes, we can do the responsivness testing using the selenium. It provide Selenium grid which is specially made for running the test cases in various combination of operating systems and browsers. Using this we can test our website responsiveness in various combination of operating systems and browsers.

What Kind of Testing is Important in Responsive Design?

These are some of important testing in the responsive design testing:

  • Cross browser testing- Working properly across all browsers.
  • User interface testing- User interface is not breaking in too smaller or larger devices.
  • Fall back testing- Your website is able to rendering into all the browsers even if you are using a newly supported HTML tags or css selectors for designing. 

What are the 3 Components of Responsive Web Design?

Component of responsive web design are the following:

  • The media quarry is working properly for all the size of screens
  • Ensuring the website is accessible in all the web browsers 
  • User interface design is responsive all across the devices

Suggested Reading

Top 7 Tools for Responsive Web Design Testing

The Ultimate Responsive Website Design Testing Checklist

Responsive Design Testing Checklist

Top 5 Cross Browser Testing Alternatives


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