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Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#91

Post by chadlavi »

n8cpdx wrote: post #24

Please test with Safari on desktop at least. I routinely find things that are just completely broken. And not small names, big names like Hulu, Clover, green chef, and others have just completely broken on Safari. Integration with Google’s captcha seems to be a common failure point. Also please consider writing your apps in a way such that they don’t completely shit the bed if your 600th ad tracker script fails to lo…

Occasionally I run into innocuous enough websites that just don't work at all unless I let them track me.

Note to all fellow fe devs: don't fucking make your call to analytics a blocking process!

Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#92

Post by justsomehnguy »

dutchCourage wrote: post #33

I don't think it's worth testing on old versions of Chrome and Firefox since they're updated automatically. iOS Safari on the other hand, can't be updated on older phones since it's tied to iOS updates. This makes any Safari bug linger for a few years. It's also the only rendering engine available on iphone so some people are truly stuck using an old version. So I'd say, test on Chrome because it's ubiquitous and tes…

> I don't think it's worth testing on old versions of Chrome and Firefox since they're updated automatically

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-cyc...

Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#93

Post by warrenm »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9
sachinjain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixing any issue specific on Safari is a whole challenge on another level. Hope you had an easy time debugging issues on Safari.

At work we've never had one that was that bad. In one cases it was third-party cookie issues that affected Safari before everyone else. Personally Safari is the reason why some of my image-based sites still use JPG in parallel with WEBP. I think they fixed it just recently, but if you have an older mac (i do) Apple couldn't be bothered to include a WEBP codec with the OS. Firefox, Chrome and every other browser for m…

Honestly, I thought pretty much everyone had moved to PNG from JPG by now

Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#94

Post by warrenm »

thepra wrote: post #50
Arubis wrote: post #15

I consult, frequently jumping between web application codebases. Very often, I bring cross-browser testing with me by sheer nature of using Firefox when _everyone_ has been using Chrome exclusively for years. I end up finding issues; about half the time, clients don't care, because all their customers use Chrome. This direction worries me (we did this with MSIE and it took a decade+ to heal those wounds).

Just tell them Chrome is going to become the next IE if everything only works on Chrome

id est?

That's the response you'll get from most people nowadays ... especially if they're under 40

Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#95

Post by toast0 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #80
jfk13 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about the number of your users who are directly using Firefox; it's also about ensuring your code isn't inadvertently depending on non-standard Chrome quirks, and promoting standards compliance, portability, robustness, and such-like goodness on the web. (Test IE11 as well, by all means, if it's relevant to your users; but it's much less relevant to the future of the web.)

i’m just being silly when I ask this, but if you have data that most of your users, use Chrome, who cares if quirks that work in chrome don’t work and other browsers, if your users aren’t using those other browsers??

Quirks that only work in Chrome may stop working in a future release. Things that work on Chrome and FF are more likely to continue to work.

Ideally, you'd have reliable usage numbers by browser and platform, as well as a threshold of usage that demands testing. Maybe that's 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%? Aggregate up, so if FF desktop doesn't hit the numbers, maybe FF in general does, or maybe 'other browsers' does. Or maybe commit to testing the top N platforms over 1% usage.

Lower on the usage scale doesn't need to be pixel perfect or pretty at all, IMHO, but major site features should still work.

Re: Ask HN: How relevant is cross-browser testing anymore?

#97

Post by CM30 »

Well you don't need to test on lots of versions, since updates are usually automatic now (or at least highly encouraged on startup). But you definitely need to test on Chrome and Firefox in the browser (maybe also Safari?), and both Chrome and Safari on mobile, since there are JavaScript APIs and CSS features not supported by all of them.

The latter is especially true when you're trying to make a PWA or 'web app', since Apple does not like letting websites have similar abilities to native apps on their devices...

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