It can be a significant challenge for development teams to ensure that software functions seamlessly across various devices, operating systems and browsers. Whether it be an Android mobile device or a Windows desktop, users expect a flawless experience whichever platform they choose. Any compatibility issues – from a misaligned interface on a mobile device to a feature not loading correctly in a specific browser – results in users being unable to use the software as intended, leading to frustration. This highlights the importance of effective compatibility testing to identify and resolve these issues before they impact user experience.
In addition to functionality, security is a critical concern in compatibility testing. Each platform may introduce different vulnerabilities, making it essential to verify that software maintains its security protocols across all devices and web browsers. If overlooked, these gaps can expose your application to risks, even if the software functions correctly.
Traditional compatibility testing often involves duplication across platforms, leading to increased complexity, longer testing cycles and higher costs. Speed and quality are paramount in software development – developers are always being pushed to ship on time, and as a result, this duplication approach falls short.
This is where T-Plan’s innovative approach comes in – by allowing teams to write compatibility tests once and reuse them across various platforms, we minimize redundancy, maximize performance, and ensure your software ships having been thoroughly tested across various environments, ensuring full browser compatibility and functionality on different operating systems.
To truly optimise compatibility testing, we need to rethink how we approach it. In this article we’ll explore the fundamentals and best practices that can make compatibility testing more efficient and effective.
Table of Contents
The basics of compatibility testing: understanding the challenge
In general, compatibility testing ensures your software performs consistently on a wide range of browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions across different configurations. It is not just about checking functionality, but it ensures that users have the same experience irrespective of the environment in which they access your application.
The real challenge comes from the vast number of device, screen resolution, and operating system combinations to test, which includes hardware testing and testing for backward compatibility with older versions of both software and browsers. It can quickly become overwhelming managing the tremendous variety of devices – smartphones, tablets and desktops – along with different operating system versions – iOS, Android and Windows – plus different browsers. Testing becomes a tedious process without any strategic approach, which ultimately leads to a lot of wasted effort.
So, the key question remains: how do you maintain thorough test coverage without exponentially increasing workload, while ensuring both forward and backward compatibility?
Best practices for effective compatibility testing
There are some key best practices that you can take to handle the complexity of compatible testing effectively. These approaches will help in prioritising efforts, maximizing test coverage and minimising duplicate work across various platforms.
Prioritise devices and platforms
Not all devices and operating systems configurations are used equally across your audience. You would be completely wasting your time were you to spend several hours checking compatibility for a Linux system using an obscure browser at 480×320 resolution; unless of course you had data to suggest that most of your users are using a similar setup. You need to target the platforms and web browsers your users use most – as this will allow you to achieve significant test coverage without wasting time. If most of your users use iOS on an iPhone 13 using Chrome, most of your testing should match this while also considering how browser compatibility issues may arise across different operating systems.
Automate where possible
Automating helps to perform compatibility tests more efficiently. Through test automation, you will be able to execute tests on multiple sets of environments simultaneously, saving time and effort. Automation is unbelievably valuable for regression testing, as it ensures updates to your software do not bring new compatibility issues across different platforms. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean automating for the sake of automating – automate things that take the most time, where your QA team and your developers are continually performing the same, repetitive actions.
Reuse test cases across platforms
Writing reusable tests is one of the most effective ways to streamline compatibility testing. Instead of writing separate tests for each platform, find similarities across various environments first. For example, while iOS and Android may have different interfaces, much of the core functionality can be tested similarly, including browser testing. Tools like T-Plan make it possible to write test cases once and execute them across multiple platforms, reducing duplicated effort. Additionally, image-based testing tools can verify that you are testing what you think you are – while many testing tools test the backend functionality using code, T-Plan uses image-based algorithms to test what the user actually sees.
Simulate real-world conditions
Compatibility testing is not only about functional testing; it’s about replicating real-world user experiences. Include tests that simulate different network conditions, battery levels, and background app processes. These factors can significantly impact how your application performs across various environments.
Continuous integration and testing
Incorporating compatibility testing into your continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines is essential for keeping up with rapid development cycles. Automating these tests makes sure that every new code change or update is tested across all target platforms for compatibility issues. Additionally, integrating forward compatibility testing within the CI/CD process ensures that your software remains functional even after future system updates. Tools like T-Plan simplify managing these various configurations and ensure comprehensive functional testing across environments.
Difficulties in compatibility testing and how to overcome them
Despite implementing best practices, compatibility testing still presents several challenges. From device fragmentation to security as well as managing time and resources effectively, teams often struggle to maintain a streamlined process. Let’s look at some of the key challenges and strategies for overcoming them.
Device fragmentation
With so many devices on the market, each having their different screen size, resolution and hardware configuration, it’s impossible to test every permutation manually. This challenge gets increasingly more complex when new models and OS updates are announced yearly.
Make use of automation tools and emulators to cover the maximum number of device combinations. Prioritise testing on real devices that represent the largest portion of your user base, while using emulators and simulators for lower-priority combinations.
Maintaining test consistency across platforms
Divergence in operating systems, web browsers and hardware can lead to unexpected bugs or variations in user experience; even if the backend functionality is the same, sometimes differences in screen resolution or other aspects can mean that, for example, on an iOS device at a particular screen resolution a particular button displays properly, but on an Android device at the same screen resolution, that same button is obscured by another page element and it’s not possible for the user to actually tap it.
An image-based, cross-platform testing tool like T-Plan will enable you to create reusable scripts interact with applications in a consistent manner across platforms. This helps ensure that tests are not only efficient but also reliable in detecting discrepancies between environments. Because it’s image based, T-Plan will alert you to real issues that users will experience that other testing tools will not.
Time and resource constraints
Compatibility testing can be very time-consuming, and this can be a real problem for teams working under the pressure of tight deadlines. Testing against every device that might be used, every OS version, and browser is impractical even if you have a team of hundreds of QA testers; let alone if you only have two or three.
You should be strategic with testing, prioritising the most impactful devices and platform combinations. Second, streamline processes by automating repetitive tasks. And thirdly, consider a cloud-based or hybrid (like T-Plan) testing platform so you have access to a range of devices without necessarily having to physically source them yourself.
How T-Plan simplifies compatibility testing
While best practices can improve your compatibility testing, T-Plan offer unique features that makes it even easier to streamline testing across multiple environments. In fact, with T-Plan’s image-based automation and cross-platform test capabilities, you can reduce complexity and save time without sacrificing test coverage.
Write once, reuse across platforms
This is one of main benefits of using T-Plan and it’s one that is very rare among automated testing tools – write test scripts once and reuse them across different platforms. This means you can avoid the repetitive task of writing separate test cases for each environment, which vastly saves time and effort, whilst ensuring your tests are as consistent as possible.
Full device control across environments
T-Plan gives testers full control over both real devices and emulators/simulators, thus offering thorough testing across hardware and software environments. Whether you need to execute your tests on real mobile devices or virtual machines, T-Plan guarantees that the same test script will be seamlessly executed across all environments.
Image-based automation for real user interaction
T-Plan’s image-based automation simulates real user interactions, such as swiping, tapping and zooming, ensuring that the UI and functionality behave consistently across devices. With this approach you can test your application’s look and feel in a way that mimics how actual users behave. This makes it easier for you to identify any discrepancies or issues arising from differences in screen size or touch interfaces more easily.
Continuous testing integration
T-Plan integrates smoothly with CI/CD pipelines, enabling continuous compatibility testing as part of your development process. By automating these tests, you can catch compatibility issues early in the development cycle and prevent them from becoming larger problems later. This helps ensure that your application remains reliable and functional across all platforms as latest updates are released.
A real-world example: cross-platform app testing with T-Plan
Let’s look at a real-world scenario to see how the compatibility testing approach of T-Plan can benefit your software app and enhance software compatibility. To get the most out of this example, let’s consider an application for both the Android and iOS operating systems. In a typical scenario, you would need to write test scripts for each OS separately, fine-tuning it according to their UI and functionality differences.
With T-Plan, you can write a single test script that works uniformly on both platforms. Let’s say you test the login functionality of your app. The very same script will work for both Android and iOS with minor adjustments for platform-specific elements like navigation and user input methods. Not only does it save time, but it also ensures consistency in how tests are conducted across devices, improving overall software compatibility across platforms.
Moreover, with T-Plan, it is possible to connect to real devices and emulators seamlessly, giving you the flexibility to test on a variety of devices without needing to manually manage multiple test environments. By integrating these into your software testing process, teams can quickly validate that the app acts as expected on either platform and streamlines the testing process while bringing down risks of platform-specific issues.
Final thoughts
Compatibility testing is a crucial aspect of software testing, ensuring your applications work seamlessly across a wide array of devices, platforms and environments that your target users depend on. You can effectively perform compatibility testing through best practices like the prioritisation of platforms, automation of tests and reutilisation of test cases to avoid duplicated effort.
T-Plan should be number one on your list if you are looking for a compatibility testing tool, not only because our tooling enables teams to write tests once and perform test execution on multiple platforms but also because of our image-based automation solution which simulates real-world interactions and seamlessly integrates into the CI/CD pipeline. Integrating T-Plan into your workflow will save time, increase test coverage and maintain consistency, providing a smooth and reliable user experience across all platforms.
Ready to transform your compatibility testing process? Explore how T-Plan can help you maximise efficiency, streamline testing and deliver high-quality software with confidence.
