Main browsers for testing

Today, there are many browsers from different companies and each of them is capable of displaying web pages. Everyone decides which one to choose.  Some people like the interface and many add-ons in Chrome, some like the simplicity of Firefox, and for some who have a small need are enough standard Edge or Internet Explorer. Which browsers are better to choose to test your site? Let's consider this issue in detail. 

Ideally, you should ask the customer for a list of required browsers and devices. If that is possible, it is great. After receiving the list, we open it, arm ourselves with everything that is written in it, and then start testing :)

As practice shows, such a perfect option does not always work out and it's either the deadline is «yesterday» and there is no opportunity to write clarifying letters, or the customer does not know what he wants. The choice remains after the QA engineer. In this case, we work according to the customer-oriented logic and it may not be as easy as it seems, at first glance.

Desktop browsers

Let's betake ourselves to common sense, logic, and, of course, to Google to understand in what browsers it is better to test.  

First, let's find out which country the tested site is targeting. Let's say, this is an online store on an Australian domain with an owner from Australia and the ability to deliver goods only to Australia and New Zealand. Of course, Ukrainians have nothing to do on that site. Let's see another example. A certain Ukrainian bank decided to redesign its website and is giving it away for testing. Therefore, it is easy to determine that the consumer country is Ukraine. After defining the country, we proceed to finding statistics.

There are many online services that allow you to assess what browsers are the most popular in some country or region. To evaluate the most popular desktop browsers in Ukraine or another country you can use, for example, the Statcounter.

Below is a graph of browser usage for the period from July 2020 to June 2021.

The graph shows that the most common browser is Google Chrome with 68.76%. It is followed by browsers in popularity (ranked in order of decreasing popularity):

Safari  – 9.7%

Edge – 8.1 %

Mozilla Firefox – 7.17%

Opera – 2,47%.

These statistics should be taken into account when choosing browsers for testing a project.

You can also assess the popularity of the versions of the programs used. Data on desktop used browsers by residents of Ukraine worked for the period from July 2020 to July 2021 are presented on the diagram.

Usually, for testing in browsers  two latest browser versions are used: the latest one and the last but one.

It is considered to be okay, if the site for earlier versions of the program provides special pages - «stubs». They inform the user that the browser version he is using is outdated and recommend updating it. These pages also contain relevant links to online resources. In case of testing, you can offer the customer to install such stubs on his website.

Let's consider the Safari browser which is used by default on iOS and MAC OS. This fact should be noticed while planning to test on Macs.

Mobile browsers

The situation is slightly different for the mobile devices. Many operating systems have their own or default browsers. Thus, the popularity of these browsers is driven by the prevalence of these operating systems.

Examples:

• Safari is the native browser for all iPhone models;
• for most Android devices there is Google Chrome;
• Samsung mobile phones have their own default application called Browser.

Below is a graph of the mobile browsers used for the period from July 2020  to July 2021 on the territory of Ukraine.

The graph shows that the most common browser is Google Chrome with  63.13 %. It is followed by browsers in popularity (in order of decreasing popularity):

Safari – 14.66 % 

Opera – 10.79%

Samsung Internet – 7.84 %

UC Browser – 1.218%

Yandex Browser  - 1.34 %

Edga Legacy – 0,11%.

It is worth using this information to determine the target audience and correctly allocate resources for testing a future web project.

«Friendliness» for a QA engineer 

After choosing browsers to test on, it is  time to think about the testing process . Here you need to know that people have long written a significant number of useful add-ons that simplify and / or expand the possibilities for testing.

The leader is, no doubts,  Chrome. It is followed by Firefox and Safari. Basically, the number of available extensions directly depends on the popularity of the browser. By the way, Internet Explorer has an integrated function for displaying content with «old» browsers, which is a very useful function since it is impossible to install several versions on one copy of Windows without the need to install additional software.

Anyway, there are only 3 major browsers:

• Chrome;
• Firefox;
• Safari –only for Mac OS and iOS.

It should be remembered that you always need to focus on the end-user. For example, it makes no sense to test on the Chinese Baidu browser, if the product is aimed at the Ukrainian market. The focus should be on providing a positive browsing experience for the majority of users.