What are different kind of browser bugs?

It is a universal fact that every thing in this world is infected with some discrepancies. So does it hold well for the web browsers! This article is here to discuss about the bugs associated with the web browsers.

Till date so many bugs of the web browsers like Mozilla, internet explorer, Netscape, opera and so on have been discovered. Let us check out some of the prominent errors:

Multiple browsers bugs

Bugs discovered under this category are:

(a) Font variant ligatures are not implemented by most of the bugs. The font module level 3 of the CSS defines the property of the font variant ligatures to specify the use of ligatures. Till now no such browser has been developed that supports this property fully.

(b) Font weight is not implemented consistently by the browsers. This font weight property of CSS lays down the specifications regarding the numeric values and key words.

(c) Data tables are not managed properly by the browsers. Most of the table properties are not supported by the browsers.

(d) Layout affected by outlining property.

(e) Styling legend tags

(f) Bugs in Mozilla Firefox
Styling is not applied and problems have been experienced with the horizontal scroll bar.

(g) Bugs in Internet Explorer
When the cursor is hovered over some elements, they did not work properly with the forms; the left origin of the positioning coordinates is incorrectly set.

(h) Bugs in Opera
&rsquo and &isquo entities were not recognizable by the opera, but this was later fixed in the 8th version.

(i) Bugs in Safari
These crashes were reported when : hover :: after was used.

(j) The borders separating the head and the body sections are often placed incorrectly by the opera.

(k) Multi-column ordered list remembering.

(l) Backgrounds show through invisible tables.

(m) Buttons with images cannot be aligned with those having only text.

(n) In some browsers even the fixed elements align along with the adjacent elements.

WHAT CHALLENGES ARE FACED WHILE DEVELOPING A WEBSITE

- When you start developing or designing your web sites choose carefully between the CSS and HTML.

- Don’t go for such an advance version of the languages because if you did then you may run in to the problems with the incompatibility of the browser.

- There is so much of competition going around the whole software market.

- The browser developers are releasing new browsers at very fast pace without even testing them properly which then becomes a headache for the web site designers.

- The new languages being used today like HTML 5 and CSS 3 are now gaining very much popularity though they are pretty much complex then their preceding versions.

- Number of features to be implemented is quite huge which is the major cause of the bugs.

- Whenever you come across a bug, do not forget to report it since it may be so very rare that nobody else would have stumbled up on it.

- One thing you should always remember is to keep the problem in the reduced form as much as possible.

- For doing this you an simply make up a copy of the code and from that remove the java script or CSS files one by one and ultimately you’ll come at a point when the problem will go away.

- Now you add that file and remove the others from the ones that you did previously.

- If you find that the bug is now going away even after removing all the files then it is likely that the bug lies in HTML coding.

- Now after you know that which aspect houses the problem, you need to locate that file or code.

What we can do to avoid browser incompatibility?

Malfunctioning of the web sites across various browsers has become a topic of utter annoyance.

Why it happens so that your web site functions perfectly well on one browser and at the same time fails to perform well in some other browser?
Why it appears to be missing some thing while it appears as proper on other browsers?

The root cause of all such errors and differences is the browser incompatibility.

WHAT IS BROWSER INCOMPATIBILITY & TOOLS FOR DETECTING BROWSER INCOMPATIBILITY

- There are various tools that can help you across detecting the browser incompatibility.

- Such tools check for the browser incompatibility by comparing the various snap shots of the web site operating under various web browsers.

- Different browsers and different browser versions all add up to the browser incompatibility.

- Browser incompatibility though cannot be eradicated fully; it can be at least reduced to a certain extent.

- Though the browser is only to be blamed for its incompatibility, the measures to reduce or avoid it can be taken from both sides.

- It can be done by improving either the standards of the browser or by taking care of the web site.

- If the web site in its design and code is good, incompatibility will be noticed less.

WHY INCOMPATIBILITY ARISES?

- It arises either because of the incompatibility of the web browser or because of the problems in the web site itself.

- So you need to focus on the design an implementation of your web site rather than bogging up yourself with the browser issues.

- Employing cutting edge HTML can also run you in to the incompatibility problems as the HTML standards usually are a way step ahead of what is supported by the web browsers.

- Till now, no such browser has been developed that will take in to consideration 100 percent HTML.

- No doubt there are certain browsers that are a bit close to this value than the others.

- Using latest versions and standards of the HTML is always not a good choice. So be wise when you choose the version of HTML for designing up your web site.

- Another fact to be kept in mind is that not all the web browsers are equally efficient in translating the HTML code in to formatted web sites.

- There are some browsers that may leave certain parts of the HTML code because they are not able to execute it and again you will have trouble with your browser compatibility.

- Also all the web browsers do not translate a web page in the same manner and don’t give the same results.

- Before you start building up your web site, check out the compatibility of the different browsers so that you will have an idea what all formats and standards they support and you can build your site according and simultaneously avoiding a bug deal of incompatibility.

- After you have finished developing your web site, have your pages validated. If you are getting errors in your web site try out the trail and error debugging method.

Though the World Wide Web consortium has specified the standards for using HTML, you can very well invent your own and design your web site accordingly. But this has a disadvantage that the browser may reject the parts that cannot be executed and the appearance and functioning of your web site will be affected.

The basic difference between the two versions of a browser lies in the support they provide for the HTML. But on top of all it would be better if you pay attention to the browser compatibility while designing your web site. This will prevent you from running in to future issues regarding the incompatibility of the browser.

What are different characteristics of compatibility testing?

First let us clear up with the concept of compatibility.

Compatibility of a software system or an application or any hardware system or components can be defined as the ability of that software system or hardware component to work efficiently with all the versions either newer or older of all CPU architecture designs and operating systems.

- Compatibility is one of the most important properties of any software system or application and hardware system.
- Not every where, every one uses the same CPU architecture designs and operating systems.
- Therefore, it becomes necessary to make software and hardware compatible will all sorts of systems available.
- Otherwise, the software or the hardware will remain confined to only one CPU architecture and operating system.
- There will be no benefit to the software and hardware developers who developed that software or hardware.

In other words, the software or the hardware product or artifact get promotion and hence it would not be widely accepted.
Keeping in view all these issues, care is taken to provide maximum compatibility to the software or the hardware system. Before its release to the open public, the software or the hardware product needs to undergo testing for determining its compatibility.
Such testing is called compatibility testing.

- Compatibility is categorized under non functional testings.
- Compatibility testing can be defined as the testing that is conducted on the software application or the hardware component to determine the concerned product’s compatibility with the computing technological environment.

A proper computing technological environment contains all of the below mentioned aspects:

- Bandwidth handling capacity: the environment should be able to handle bandwidth of the networking software and hardware.
- It should have a computing capacity of hardware platform like HP 9000 and IBM 360 etc.
- It should be compatible with all kinds of peripherals. In other words, it should have compatibility of peripherals. Peripherals include DVD drive, printers, monitors, speakers and so on.
- It should be compatible with all operating systems including UNIX, MVS, windows and so on.
- It should support all types of data bases like oracle, DB2, Sybase etc.
- It should be well compatible with other software systems like messaging tools, networking systems and web servers.
- It should be browser compatible. It should support all the available browsers till date like Netscape, internet explorer, Firefox, Google chrome, safari etc.

The above aspects together make up a proper and efficient computing environment to carry out compatibility testing for the software and hardware products.

Compatibility testing comprises many other small testings like peripheral compatibility testing, browser compatibility testing etc. browser compatibility testing is also known as user experience testing.
It involves the checking of web and network applications on all the available different browsers.

It is done to ensure the following:
- The application under testing should respond exactly in the same way with all the different browsers. It should exhibit same features and functionalities when run under different browsers.
- The visual experience for the users must be the same irrespective through which browser they are using the web application.
- The applications should be backwards compatible i.e., it should work with the older versions of the browser as well.
- The applications should be carrier compatible i.e., data transformation should be same no matter which carrier is being used. Some famous carriers include orange, sprint, Verizon, Airtel, O2 etc.
- Apart from software compatibility, the application should be hardware compatible.
- The applications should be compiler compatible i.e., there should be no difference in compilation by different compilers. All the compilers should compile the source code correctly.
- The applications should be able to run on emulators.

How lack of compatibility causes software failure?

A software system or application is said to be compatible if it is able to execute efficiently on all the models available in that particular family of the gadget of computers. Different types of computers vary less or more in different aspects like reliability, resilience, performance and so on. These differences or variations affect the execution of the software system. Also the outcome or the result of the program is affected.

- Software compatibility can be defined as the compatibility that particular software system, application or program has when it runs on a particular CPU or central processing unit architecture.

For example, Intel, Pentium, power PC etc. software compatibility is not only confined to different kinds of computers.

- It extends over a vast area.
- Software compatibility can also be defined as the ability of a software system, application or program to run on different operating systems.
- It happens very rarely that a fully compiled software system or application is able to run on many different CPU architectures.
- Usually a software system or application is developed and compiled for various different CPU architectures as well as operating systems to allow the software system to be compatible with the different kinds of operating and CPU systems.
- In contrast to compiled software system or applications, interpreted software, can easily run on many different operating systems and CPU architectures.
- But, this can happen only if the interpreter is available for that particular CPU architecture or the operating system as the case may be.

Software incompatibility is quite common with fresh releases of any software system or application and generally occurs quite a many times for the new software system released for a newer version of CPU architecture or an operating system which is quite incompatible with the older version of that particular CPU architecture or operating system.


- This is because the software system or application might be lacking some of the features and functionalities required to make it compatible with the wanted CPU architecture or operating system.
- There’s another concept that comes into scenario of the compatibility of software called “backward compatibility”.
- The software systems and applications which are able to work with the older versions of CPU architecture or operating systems are said to be backward compatible.

Apart from software compatibility we also have hardware compatibility.
- It can be defined as the compatibility of the hardware components of a computer system which has a particular CPU architecture, operating system and other things like bus; mother board etc. compatible hardware doesn’t necessarily gives its optimum performance as stated.
Best example is given by RAM chips.

- Hardware can be compatible only with those operating systems for which kernel drivers and devices are available. For example, hardware components for Mac Os do not work with Linux operating system.
- Compatibility is essential and useful but it is very difficult to keep the extraneous features and functionalities with the software and the hardware system for a very long term and that too just for the sake of compatibility.

- Compatibility is the ability of the software system or device to work with another system or device.
- Compatibility is concerned with various degrees of partnership among the software and hardware components of a system.
- Two devices or programs are said to be compatible if they respond to the software and hardware commands exactly in the same way.
- Some components achieve compatibility by making the software system believe that they are some different machines.
- Such a process is called emulation. It’s important to note that the hardware compatibility not always considers expansion slots.

Validation Phase - System Testing - Compatibility Testing and Recovery Testing

System testing concentrates on testing the complete system with a variety of techniques and methods. System testing comes after unit testing and Integration testing.

Compatibility Testing
This testing concentrates on testing whether the application performs well with third party tools, software or hardware platforms. For example, a website should run on different kind of web browsers. Similarly, an application that is developed on a particular platform should run well on other platforms as well. This is the main goal of compatibility testing.
Compatibility tests are also performed for various client/server based applications where the hardware changes from client to client. This testing is very crucial to organizations developing their own products. The products have to be checked for compliance with the competitors of the third party tools, hardware, or software platform.
A good way to ensure compatibility is to have a few resources assigned along with their routine tasks to keep updated about such compatibility issues and plan for testing when and if the need arises.

Recovery Testing
It is a system test that focuses the software to fall in a variety of ways and verifies that recovery is properly performed. If it is automatic recovery then re-initialization, check pointing mechanisms, data recovery and restart should be evaluated for correctness. If recovery requires human intervention, the mean time to repair (MTTR) is evaluated to determine whether it is within acceptable limits.

Overview and Features of Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is performed to ensure compatibility of an application or Web site with different browsers, operating systems, and hardware platforms. Compatibility testing is one of the several types of software testing performed on a system that is built based on certain criteria and which has to perform specific functionality in an already existing setup/environment.

- Compatibility testing can be performed manually or can be driven by an automated functional or regression test suite.
- The customer has different kinds of platforms, operating systems, browsers, databases, servers, clients, and hardware.
- Different versions, configurations, display resolutions, and Internet connect speeds all can impact the behavior of your product and introduce costly and embarrassing bugs.
Therefore, compatibility testing becomes necessary.
- Software is rigorously tested to ensure compatibility with all the operating systems, software applications and hardware you support.
- Compatibility testing will ensure that the code is stable in both environments and that any information/error messages or user interaction is handled and presented in the same way regardless of the OS.
- Compatibility testing can be easily accommodated in manual tests by having different members of the team work on varying screen resolutions to see what issues arise.
- Compatibility testing should take account of the varying connection speeds available to the user base.
- Compatibility testing may be undertaken as part of Performance Testing and so it is always worth checking out what the non-functional test team on a given project are planning to run in order to see if this is covered.
- Compatibility testing can be used to evaluate the performance of system/application/website on network with varying parameters such as bandwidth, variance in capacity and operating speed of underlying hardware etc.
- Compatibility testing can be used to evaluate the performance of system/application in connection with various systems/peripheral devices.
- Database compatibility testing is used to evaluate an application/system’s performance in connection to the database it will interact with.