Windows 10 different web browsers and web development testing [closed]

Most web developers likely do two things:

• Cross browser testing with services like Browser Shots (at least for general layouts) or BrowserStack (which can include automation) .

• Targeted local testing with specific browsers (possibly in a virtual machine).

Regarding mobile, some services will do mobile testing. Otherwise, you may have to run an emulator, virtual machine or development environment of some kind for that specific mobile OS.

For web apps specifically (not layout), you are likely going to do targeted testing locally with several browsers (whatever your customers are using usually). These will necessarily be limited, even if by just testing tools (for instance, browser support for automation such Selenium or iMacros). That said, certain services such as BrowserStack (mentioned above) will do bulk testing/automation on a large number of devices.

If you don't have web statistics for your customers (or want averages of what everyone else is likely using) sites like StatCounter can provide more information.

Note that you should also do reasonable research as well. For instance, in Asian markets older versions of IE are often a bit more heavily in use than other areas of the world. If more of your traffic comes from that area, you may need to design a little differently. Likewise, small percentages globally can add up to hundreds of thousands of people, so you shouldn't necessarily dismiss small market shares out of hand.

Do you really need to install all possible browsers on a system to test with all variations of browsers?

No. Besides other considerations, most often there are "lines" in terms of feature support in browsers. Typically, once support is added for a feature, it isn't removed.

So your concern is likely to be browsers before a certain version (e.g if support for Feature X was added in Browser v5 and the current version is Browser v8, you likely only need Browser v4 and v8 to test compatibility). That said, developers tend to have more browsers than the average user.

If you know any browser features you are likely incorporating, sites like Can I Use can also be helpful for determining when those features were added to specific browser versions (including mobile).

Also note that there are well-known "problems" when you get into the weeds of design. For instance, whether to support IE 8 and IE 9 is a decision that often comes up in this kind of development. Doing research here would likely be helpful to you as well.

I was in a meeting and someone put a lot of emphasis on being sure we test all web browsers from Opera, Firefox, Chrome and so on.

It really isn't possible to do thorough testing with all the various browsers (especially once you start adding in more niche browsers), so you will likely need to do some triage. You will almost certainly do light testing with some and heavy testing with others and may need to skip some entirely.