Cross-Browser Testing For Customized Sharepoint Tiles
Ensuring Tile Consistency Across Browsers
Achieving visual consistency of customized SharePoint tiles across diverse web browsers poses complex technical challenges. Varying browser implementations produce inconsistent renderings of style sheets, scripts, and markup. Strategic cross-browser testing uncovers rendering divergences through simulated testing across an array of target browsers.
The Challenge of Varying Browser Implementations
The major web browsers rely on differing codebases to parse CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Google Chrome utilizes the Blink rendering engine while Firefox employs Gecko. Legacy versions of Internet Explorer leverage Trident while Edge adopts Chromium. The end result is inconsistent tile appearances.
Tile Customization Options in SharePoint
SharePoint provides tile modification options involving scripts, stylesheets, and HTML markup overrides. Custom SharePoint tiles rely on external .js files, .css rules, and employing div elements with unique ids for greater layout control. The flexibility introduces browser compatibility hurdles.
Core Components of a Tile
Fundamental aspects of SharePoint tiles include background colors or images, textual content, dynamically updated numerics, iconography, and hover-driven transformations. Custom scripts drive numerical changes while custom CSS delivers background styling. Compatibility testing examines if core components display properly across target browsers.
Setting Up a Cross-Browser Testing Environment
Configuring BrowserStack
BrowserStack provides online access to multiple versions of popular web browsers. The cloud-based testing tool eliminates local browser installs through virtual machines running Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge builds. After account creation, available browser types and operating systems become selectable for cross-browser tests.
Creating a Range of Virtual Devices
BrowserStack further enables configuration of virtual mobile phones and tablets to analyze responsive web design issues. By adding various iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone devices to the testing suite, tile appearance across smart devices receives examination. Testing across simulated desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets identifies compatibility bottlenecks.
Key Differences to Test For
Rendering Engines
Alternative browser rendering engines, like Gecko vs. Blink, interpret page markup and stylesheets differently. Testing identifies rendering distinctions in tile background images, grid layouts, icon placements, and dynamic effects between browsers leveraging contrasting engines.
CSS Support
Varying levels of CSS feature support by browsers requires testing. Customized SharePoint tiles may employ newer CSS flexbox, grid, or filter effects lacking compatibility with dated browser versions. Testing verifies if tile styling degrades gracefully when specific CSS properties go unrecognized.
JavaScript Engines
JavaScript powering SharePoint tile dynamics through DOM manipulation and AJAX encounters inconsistent handling. Browsers incorporate independent JavaScript engines like Google’s V8 or Firefox’s SpiderMonkey which translate code differently. Testing locates potential JavaScript errors producing tile issues.
Writing Cross-Browser Compliant Code
Using Fallbacks and Polyfills
Fallbacks substitute new CSS or JavaScript features for legacy alternatives when browser versions lack support. Polyfill scripts emulate cutting edge functionality for outdated browsers. Employing these techniques creates graceful degradation as opposed to abrupt tile failure within older browsers.
Feature Detection
Feature detection employs conditional testing to check if browsers support necessary JavaScript, CSS or HTML functionality prior to utilization. With feature detection, tiles selectively adapt to provide maximum visual consistency between modern and legacy web clients through dynamic cross-browser optimization.
Graceful Degradation
Graceful degradation simplifies tile appearance selectively when certain browsers do not support bleeding-edge features. Methods like CSS fallbacks or JavaScript polyfills incrementally enhance visuals in capable browsers rather than failing outright. Graceful degradation prevents abrupt tile disappearance in dated browsers.
Automated Testing with Selenium
Configuring Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid enables automated cross-browser testing by directing Selenium commands to multiple machines hosting target browser configurations. Central hub nodes distribute tests to various environments like Windows 10 with Chrome and macOS running Safari for parallel test case execution.
Setting Up Test Cases
Selenium IDE captures discrete tile compatibility test operations as reusable test cases. Test steps confirm elements appear correctly, pagination functions, and layouts remain consistent. Converting manual checks into automated scripts with Selenium IDE streamlines iterative cross-browser testing.
Analyzing Results
Detailed test reports produced by Selenium Grid test runs reveal rendering errors, layout problems, and browser crashes when reviewing tiles. Automated testing efficiently Indicates browser and device-specific defects demanding debugging and rework for true cross-browser interoperability.
Real-World Examples
Troubleshooting Visual Inconsistencies
One customized tile exhibited excess whitespace on iPad while overlapping text appeared within Firefox on Ubuntu. Debugging determined an outdated Clearfix polyfill caused iPad issues while lacking Firefox flexbox support created word wrap defects. Targeted modifications ensured graceful degradation across environments.
Fixing JavaScript Errors
A tile update script failed in Internet Explorer 9 resulting in stale numeric content. Investigation uncovered Array.map method reliance requiring a jQuery fallback for IE 9 compatibility. Installing a jQuery polyfill resolved the error enabling accurate data updates regardless of client browser choice.
Maintaining Robust Tiles
Ongoing tile optimizations demand persistent compatibility testing as new browser versions constantly emerge. Regular cross-browser reviews leveraging automated Selenium scripts proactively discover rendering distinctions. By addressing known differences through graceful degradation, customized SharePoint tiles achieve resilience across multiple operating systems and web clients while offering enriched user experiences.
