At Feedjit we have a strong focus on QA or Quality Assurance. My co-founder created the BBC's digital television testing lab, so we have some great in-house QA experience. This week I'm going to give you some tips on how to ensure the quality of your own blog or website. Today we're going to start by covering which platforms you should be testing your site in.
Whenever you change something on your blog or website, you should test your site across all the major browsers and operating systems. If you don't have access to all browsers and operating systems, then you should test it in as many as you can.
At a minimum you should test your site in:
- Firefox (on any operating system)
- Google Chrome
- Internet Explorer version 8
- Internet Explorer version 8 in compatibility mode.
Here's a great tip if you don't have Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) but want to make sure your site looks great in IE7: Load up Internet Explorer 8. See that little icon on the location bar that looks like a broken page? Click it to put the browser in compatibility mode. It will now load the page as if it was Internet Explorer version 7. Make sure your page looks great in regular IE8 and compatibility mode. This page on Microsoft's site has a guide to switch to compatibility mode.
If you would like to do a fuller test to make sure your site looks great in 95% of browsers, you should test your site in:
- Firefox on Windows Vista, XP or Windows 7
- Firefox on OS X (Mac)
- Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista, XP or Windows 7
- Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista, XP or Windows 7
- Chrome on Windows Vista, XP or Windows 7
- Chrome on OS X (Chrome on Windows behaves differently to Chrome on OS X)
- Safari on OS X
- Opera on Windows or OS X
Note: The above list refers to the newest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
At Feedjit we go a little further. We test the current and previous versions of all major browsers on WIndows, OS X and on Linux. We also test several minor browsers like Opera, Flock and Konqueror. We also test major releases with even older browsers like IE6 and Firefox 2. This kind of testing is very intensive and time consuming, so I'd recommend starting off with the smaller list above and that will catch most issues and give you a reasonable level of confidence in your site quality.
Tomorrow I'm going to explain how to build a mini test lab on your PC or Mac.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
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