Oct.

31
International Journal of advanced studies in Computer Science and Engineering
IJASCSE, Volume 3, Issue 10, 2014

Browser Compatibility Testing Using Manual

Testing Methods and Test Tools
Bhavnesh Kaalra1 Dr. K. Gowthaman2
1 2 2
Research Scholar of Singhania University Deputy Director (T&D) , Inter University Consortium
1
School of CS & IT – Singhania University Indira Gandhi National Open University
Distt. Jhunjhunu – Rajasthan, India Delhi, India

Abstract — With new version of Internet Explorer (IT) Services organizations, there are other factors as well
browser launched by Microsoft® very frequently, we that needs to be considered carefully before deciding for
tried to find out what browser compatibility issues a web switch-over, like support for application development &
site faces when being rendered on the latest version of testing, IT support and so on.
Internet Explorer. We designed a framework that helps
a software tester to quickly test the web site against Now coming back to Windows® 7, the platform is built on
top of Windows® Vista kernel and is different from Win XP
potential browser compatibility issues using manual
underlying architecture. The result is that the desktop
testing methods as well as through automated browser
applications once built for Windows® XP environment will
compatibility tools that are open-source and available in no longer be good for Windows® 7 platform. Either the
the market free-of-cost. applications will not work on Windows® 7 platform or have
major issues during migration to Windows® 7 platforms.
Another challenge that was considered during Similarly the web applications that once developed to be
framework design was to make sure that it supports rendered in IE6 browser will have rendering issues with IE11
testing of both static and dynamic pages website. The browser.
study proves that the designed framework helps quick-
finding of browser compatibility issues in a website The latest version of Internet Explorer (IE11) is
(when rendered on Internet Explorer browser) through completely different from previous versions of Internet
simplified methods. Explorer internally in terms of coding and handling of
features and is freshly designed. Hence the “Internet
Keywords- Browser Compatibility; Web Compatibility; Explorer” inheritance is no longer preserved. The impact is
Browser Compatibility manual testing methods; Browser clear; organizations will have to think in terms of hundreds
Compatibility automated testing methods of applications that needs migration to this new combination
of Windows® 7 and IE11 browser. The applications could
I. INTRODUCTION be desktop applications (thick client), Web applications (thin
client) or installers.
With the launch of Internet Explorer Version 11 in the
market by Microsoft® Corporation [1], organizations that are The goal of our work in this paper is to identify common set
willing to upgrade from their existing Internet Explorer of browser compatibility issues in different versions of
version are left with a critical decision as to whether upgrade Internet Explorer. Design browser compatibility framework
their existing operating systems to Microsoft Windows® 7 or as ready-reckoner for software testers. Finally design a
not. Since Internet Explorer Version 11 supports Microsoft browser compatibility reporting template to report web
Windows® 7 onwards [2] therefore any operating system application compatibility.
below it, will not be supported by Internet Explorer version
11. E.g. Windows XP

Other-way-round, the great restriction with Windows® 7 in

terms of browser is that their popular IE6 browser version is
incompatible with Windows® 7 platform [3]. One needs to
have IE8 or IE11 on Windows® 7 platform to have seamless
browsing experience. For a large business the decision to
switch to another windows® platform is not going to be an
easy job. The decision needs to be taken with great care as it
involves huge business impact. For Information Technology

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IJASCSE, Volume 3, Issue 10, 2014

during website creation. These web sites were not upgraded

II. BROWSER COMPATIBILITY ISSUES IN INTERNET
along with the Internet Explorer version upgrades. Starting
EXPLORER with IE11, document modes are deprecated and will no
longer be used, except on a temporary basis. The older web
Let’s now talk about browser compatibility issues a web site
sites that implemented older features rendered fine in
faces when being loaded onto Internet Explorer version 11
Internet Explorer versions prior to version 11 introduced.
and then move onto other general web compatibility issues
However would not work as per the expectation in IE11.
faced over previous versions of Internet explorer. When we
Starting with IE11, edge mode is the preferred document
think about web application migration to IE11 environment
mode; it represents the highest support for modern standards
from legacy environment, there is a list of issues available
available to the browser [4]. HTML5 document type
on various bogs and also released by Microsoft®. These
declaration to enable edge mode is to be used as shown in
issues are in the form of HTML code level implementation
the below Fig 2:
which once valid for previous Internet Explorer versions; is
now no longer be supported for IE11 browser.
Fig 2: HTML5 document type declaration
 User-agent string changes [4]
One of the visible updates in IE11 is user-agent string as HTML
compared to previous versions of Internet Explorer that
affects websites. Example of user-agent string reported on
Win 7 - IE11 system configuration is as depicted in Fig 1.
<!doctype html>
Fig 1: User-agent string for Win7 – IE11

Java
Script  Legacy API additions, changes, and removals [4]
Some websites were designed in such-a-way that they look
for support of legacy (HTML4) features. Now the browser
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko that support legacy features as well as modern standards
face challenge in rendering these web sites and hence
another kind of browser compatibility issue. New supported
standards could be HTML5, CSS3 etc. Now as soon as this
The following differences are observed in the string when kind of website is rendered in the browser, it will
compared to the earlier versions of Internet Explorer [4]: automatically switch to legacy features mode and end-user
will have legacy experience while navigating the website.
o The compatible ("compatible") and browser
("MSIE") tokens have been removed. IE11 in-turn added, updated & removed a number of legacy
o The "like Gecko" token has been added (for features [4]:
consistency with other browsers). o The navigator.appName property now
o The version of the browser is now reported by returns "Netscape" to reflect the HTML5
a new revision ("rv") token. standard and to match behavior of other
There have been issues (web compatibility) when a user browsers.
opens an IE11 on the supported operating system machine o The navigator.product property now returns
however gets a warning of unsupported browser. This user- "Gecko" in order to reflect the HTML5
agent string changes avoid the situation of IE11 being standard and to match behavior of other
identified as incorrect browser or previous version of browsers.
browser. The web sites that were developed keeping o The XDomainRequest object is replaced by
previous versions of internet explorer in mind may face CORS for XMLHttpRequest.
browser compatibility issue with IE11. o Supported for _proto_ has been added.
 Document mode changes [4] o The dataset property has been added.
From Internet Explorer Version 8 onwards, a new feature From the above it is very clearly visible that the websites
was introduced – “Document mode”. This helps transition designed using legacy features will certainly have browser
from features supported by previous versions of Internet compatibility issues when rendered on IE11 browser.
Explorer to those specified by modern standards.There are
websites that still uses the older features implemented

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 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Discrepancy Fig 4: IE7 Menu Vs IE8 Menu
As reported by one user, the CSS template is not the same in
different versions of Internet Explorer. It is claimed to be
working perfectly in Safari, Chrome & FireFox. Some of
the observed compatibility issues are - background missing
in IE9, gaps around background in IE7, page simply not
there in IE6 etc. [5].
 Errors during Editing Articles [6]
In Internet Explorer 11 editing of articles throws errors. The
sites work fine in Google Chrome.
Internet Explorer 7 Working Internet Explorer 8 Non-Working
Menu Menu
o E.g. Microsoft TechNet Wiki - fail/corrupt
input, impossible to edit articles  JavaScript issues
o Microsoft Connect - not working properly A dynamic web page of a website is generated based on the
o Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery - impossible processing of certain items and is finally rendered. A
to edit gallery entries with images JavaScript implemented on the web page updates the
o WordPress - Erratic behavior content of the page based on the user inputs. In below
figure, the web page renders an image using JavaScript.
 Broken Tables & Menu items
This page throws JavaScript error – “‘null’ is null or not an
In Internet Explorer 8, Tables & Menu items sometimes object” in Internet Explorer 8 however works perfectly in
appear broken however they are rendered correctly in Internet Explorer 7.
Internet Explorer 7.
o An unordered list is implemented in a web Fig 4: JavaScript Error in IE8
page of a web site. When this web site is
rendered on Internet Explorer the list appears
broken. It renders perfectly in Internet
Explorer 7 as shown in below Fig 3.

Fig 3: IE7 list Vs IE8 List

Internet Explorer 7 Properly Internet Explorer 8 Displays a

Updates the Image JavaScript Error

In this section we tried to highlight some issues which are

common and are visible frequently during web surfing
Internet Explorer 7 List displays Internet Explorer 8 List though the list is just a tip of iceberg. Also the readers can
correctly displays incorrectly find many more endless internet explorer rendering issues
on the internet in various blogs, and other discussion
o A web page implements an ASP.net menu forums. In next section, we will try to formulate a
item. It is being used to navigate to other pages framework for software testers that can help them testing a
of web site. This appears broken when website very quickly and effectively on web compatibility
rendered in Internet Explorer 8. It renders front.
perfectly in Internet Explorer 7 as shown in the
below Fig 4.

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International Journal of advanced studies in Computer Science and Engineering
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III. WEB COMPATIBILITY TESTING FRAMEWORK in-turn compile a list of all available pages of the given
web application. Next step is to detail out the method to
Compatibility testing of web applications starts with careful navigate to those pages. The web pages could be ‘Static
planning of testing activities and deciding upon what is web pages’ or ‘Dynamic web pages’. While it is easy to
essential Vs what is out of scope of compatibility testing. A navigate to a static page by simply entering the URL of
compatibility tester has to keep in mind that the focus of the page and documenting the URL for future
compatibility testing is to concentrate on rendering of web reference, the same approach will not work for dynamic
pages on target Internet Explorer browser. An overview of pages. One can reach dynamic pages by navigating
web (Browser) compatibility testing is depicted in the figure through a scenario and providing specific inputs to the
below. application at specific points. These business scenarios
have to be documented either in the form of use cases
Fig 5: Web (Browser) Compatibility Testing Scope & or test cases for future reference/use along with the
Overview specific inputs.
 Based on the application flows, classify the application
as High / Medium / Low complexity application. This
will help deciding on the further testing techniques
(E.g. Tool based testing, Exploratory testing /
Regression testing etc.)
 During the Test Execution phase, based on the
application complexity classification, a software tester
applies respective testing types as follows:
o High Complexity Application: Tool based >
Exploratory > Regression Testing
o Medium Complexity Application: Tool
based > Exploratory
o Low Complexity Application: Tool based
alone
 Testing begins by navigating to web pages on target
Internet Explorer environment and verifying against
legacy environment (previous Internet Explorer). Focus
We designed a Web Compatibility testing framework that should be on page rendering in terms of misaligning of
helps software tester while testing web compatibility on an web objects – objects on header and footer, logos, menu
Internet Explorer browser (though this framework is items, contents implemented through web tables etc.
independent of any browser and can be used to do web Document issues found (as defects) and publish them in
compatibility testing on multiple browsers). Let’s try to the form of ACR (application compatibility report).
understand the framework. Based on the issues, one can classify the web
Fig 6: Web (Browser) Compatibility Testing Framework applications as Red or Amber or Green.

 Green application will be those that renders

flawlessly on target Internet Explorer.
 Amber application will be those that requires
minor tweak in application configuration files,
changing browser settings etc. Once these
settings are done, these applications will also
work fine on target Internet Explorer.
 However Red applications will be those that
are altogether incompatible on target Internet
Explorer. These applications require code
remediation or code fix in order for them to
work on target Internet Explorer.

 Some of the automated open-source web compatibility

testing tools can also be employed during testing. These
 The first phase of the framework is “Application tools helps speed up testing and proves reliable while
Understanding”. Software tester will gain web reporting issues. Some of the tools are:
application understanding through various methods and

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International Journal of advanced studies in Computer Science and Engineering
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check for web page operations
 CITRIX AppDNA® tool [7] that write, alter, or destroy data
on the user’s computer
 DELL ChangeBASE® tool [8] Verify folder creation on
 Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview® appropriate web pages (User
tool [9] folders, My Documents
folders, and folders with
 IETester tool [10] 7
localization have changed
√ √ √ √ √
 BrowserStack tool [11] since Windows XP.
 BrowserShots tool [12] etc. Applications with hard-coded
paths may fail)
Look for IE11 upgrade error
 Compatibility issues found during application testing 8 √
messages
are later tracked and managed till closure. Once these 9
Check web pages using CSS
√ √ √ √ √
issues are fixed, we say that the solution provided meets style
Invoke and close of child
expectation or in other words the web application 10 √ √ √ √ √
windows
renders perfectly in the target internet explorer browser. Check the tool tips of the
11 √ √ √ √ √
controls and help text
Check the browser close
12 √ √ √ √ √
IV. EVALUATION buttons in child windows
Resizing the browser window
The above framework was tested against a live site to 13 √ √ √ √ √
should resize the canvas
evaluate the concept and deduce that the techniques Verify for Page zoom-in and
14 √ √ √ √ √
visualized in the framework would work as per the zoom-out functionality
expectations while performing actual world software testing Verify the font size for web
15 √ √ √ √ √
pages
of web application. The results are depicted in below Fig.
Verify the flash files are
16 √ √ √ √
rendered properly
Fig 7: Web pages tracking sheet against the target browsers Verify that dynamic HTML
17 web pages are rendered √ √ √ √ √
properly
Email links should open the
18 √ √ √ √ √
mailbox
The application should handle
19 √ √ √ √ √
404/500 errors gracefully
Verify http forwarding to https
20 secure site rendered properly √ √ √ √ √
for certificate based sites

Fig 8: Compatibility Issues in IE10 Vs IE8

Table 1: Web Objects compatibility Checklist

Ch
S. Saf
Checklist Items IE11 IE9 FF ro
No. ari
me
Tables, Menus, Drop Downs,
Check Boxes, Radio Buttons,
1 Images, headers & footers, √ √ √ √ √
Link colors on the web page
render properly
Text content is aligned
2 properly & Date format is √ √ √ √ √
correct
Pop-up windows are displayed
3 √ √ √ √ √
properly
JavaScript works properly on
4 web pages - without error √ √ √ √ √
messages
ActiveX components are
5 √ √
handled properly
Verification of IEPM (Internet
6 √ √
Explorer Protected Mode) -

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International Journal of advanced studies in Computer Science and Engineering
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be reported back to web designers for fixing. In-turn the

web site becomes compatible again with the newly launched
browser within short span of software re-engineering.

Though the issues mentioned in the paper are not the only
compatible issues exist in browser versions, however it a
starting point for the software testers. It serves as a guideline
and gives an idea as to what to look and where to look for
the compatibility issues. Also, software testers can look for
testing on other browsers as well like FireFox, Chrome, and
Safari etc. Finally a tester can always alert the web designer
on what is the status of web application by reporting it as
RED / AMBER or GREEN. The compatibility status
reporting of a website is an indicator that RED marked web
site is indeed going to take more time and effort to be
compatibility complaint as compared to AMBER marked
web site.
References
Fig 9: Application Compatibility Report Template [1] IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available for Consumers and
Businesses. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/11/07/ie11-
for-windows-7-globally-available-for-consumers-and-
businesses.aspx. Nov 2013.

[2] System requirements and language support for Internet Explorer

11 (IE11). http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn321440.aspx.
2013.

[3] Internet Explorer 6. Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6. Aug 2014

[4] Compatibility changes in IE11. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-

us/library/ie/bg182625(v=vs.85).aspx. Sep 2014.

[5] IE Explorer CSS Discrepancy between IE6, IE7, IE8 & IE9.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5722676/ie-explorer-css-
discrepancy-between-ie6-ie7-ie8-ie9. Mar 2013

[6] IE11 and Microsoft sites - does not work properly. Internet
Explorer Feedback (IE) Home. Bug ID: 813374.
https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/813374/ie11-and-
microsoft-sites-does-not-work-properly. Jan 2014

[7] CITRIX AppDNA.

http://www.citrix.com/products/appdna/overview.html. 2014

[8] Dell Software – Quest – ChangeBASE.

V. CONCLUSION & FUTURE SCOPE http://www.quest.com/changebase/. 2014

In today’s fast changing software world, one can’t ignore [9] Microsoft - Expression Web SuperPreview.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=2020.
the innovation and new technologies. Software giants are 2014
competing against each other and in a bid to be on the top,
they keep on launching new operating systems and browser [10] IETester. http://ietester.en.softonic.com/. 2014
versions very frequently by including the latest technologies
and features in it. On the other hand, it is really tough for the [11] BrowserStack - Live, Web-Based Browser Testing.
web designers and other organizations with websites to keep http://www.browserstack.com/. 2014
up to the pace and hence their websites falls into
compatibility issues. Through this paper we tried to give [12] BrowserShots – Browser Compatibility Testing.
directions to software testers on how quickly a website can http://browsershots.org/. 2014
be compatibility tested. Real time compatibility issues can

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