BrowserStack is the most reliable web and mobile app testing platform on the market, used by more than 2 million developers across 135 countries

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“ Testing for Fragmentation ” is a blog series. It takes a look at the market data on devices, platforms, browsers, etc. in use today, how this diversity comes into play during software development and testing—and what 2 million+ developers on BrowserStack do to account for it. More than 4 billion people access the web through combinations of - 9000+ distinct devices, shipped with 21 different operating systems (vendor + version), along with 8 major browser engines that power hundreds of browsers. In this post, we’ll deconstruct fragmentation as it exists, and what that means for application quality. Combined, they make at least 63,000 possible browser-platform-device combinations. And those are the ones we know of, at this time. That’s the scale of . fragmentation What exactly is fragmentation, really? The sum total of differences—between devices, platforms, browsers, variables like network providers and more. Why is Fragmentation a Problem? Because the differences between devices, platforms, browsers, and more cannot be abstracted by a single, universally interoperable framework. So when it comes to software development: “Fragmentation is the inability to "write once and run anywhere”. —Damith C. Rajapakse (Prof. of Software Engineering, National University of Singapore) Since your website or app can’t have universal interoperability on every possible combination of device, operating system, and browser in the market, you have to settle for its watered-down counterpart, compatibility. To achieve compatibility, you have to test every bit of code across browsers, platforms, and devices. Or you have to keep your developers busy with an endless barrage of cross-browser and cross-platform bugs that creep into the builds (or worse, production). So we do early and continuously, because the market evolves fast. compatibility testing The browsers, platforms, and devices your application works on today will lose their market share with each new: : macOS pushes platform updates once a year. Windows 10 editions hit the market sporadically. Platform update : Chrome releases major browser updates every six weeks or so. Browser update : Number of devices in the market grows by 20%, every year. Some of them will be used by your customers to access your site. Device launch Which Combinations do I Test on? For an existing website or app, you’ll start with analytics. But that’ll give you an implicitly biased answer. Your website/app only gets traffic from devices/platforms and browsers it supports in the first place. To figure out the variety of combinations of devices/platforms and browsers you must support (to keep the lights on at work, or expand your reach), look at market data. “Since it is the diversity that drives fragmentation, a closer look at diversity may provide us with clues as to how to deal with fragmentation.” —Damith C. Rajapakse In that spirit, here is a look at the depth of fragmentation—in devices, platforms, browsers, and screen resolutions. These are the first four components you’ll account for during your development and testing. Device type In 2019, global web traffic is split cleanly between mobile, desktop, and tablet. No surprises there. But even if your website’s (or app’s) traffic patterns don’t match this split, the graph is still relevant. That’s because it quantifies a behavioural shift: The Mobile Tipping Point. “The Mobile Tipping Point is the point at which consumers spend longer online per day on their mobiles than all other devices combined.” An average person on the internet spends about ~7 hours online—split equally between desktop and mobile. And so you have to test on both desktop and mobile. Is that enough? Not really. You see, there’s a multiplier effect. Fragmentation becomes a bigger problem not just with every new mobile or desktop device—but also with the operating system they come equipped with. And fragmentation within operating systems is staggering. Operating system (OS) We would split the fragmentation in operating system by device type. But in web development, desktop OS will be of concern when you’re looking at how many browsers a desktop platform supports. So let’s jump directly to the bigger problem, that of fragmentation in OS for mobile. To understand this, we’ll have to start with mobile device manufacturers. There are 6 mobile device vendors with a global market share of ~77%. This graph will look very different for your traffic, or when filtered by countries. However, in most countries, you’ll notice a common thread: Android-powered smartphones are gaining the upper hand over Apple iPhones. At the time of writing this, 40% of all web traffic comes from devices powered by Android. That’s 1.7 billion online users across the world. That wouldn't be a huge deal, if the Android fragmentation weren't a triple-layered problem: There are 6 different stock Android (the core open-source platform) versions in the market: 2. Stock Android—all 6 versions of it—only powers Google Pixel (and some LG) smartphones. Most device manufacturers create custom platforms out of stock Android for their devices. At the moment, some of the more recognizable Android-based operating systems are: One UI by Samsung (for Galaxy series)OxygenOS by One PlusMIUI by Xiaomi (a popular smartphone manufacturer in APAC)Huawei EMUI 3. Manufacturers who power their devices with Android-based operating systems don’t update them consistently. So at any given point in time, an Android app that wants to be globally accessible has to maintain compatibility with: 4-5 different versions of core Android, along with8-10 custom-Android implementations. Compared to iOS, where your app has to be compatible with 2 major iOS versions in a given year, accounting for fragmentation on Android is difficult. The two factors—device and operating systems—are important when we speak of native applications. For the web, you have to throw browsers into the mix. Browser There are 6 dominant browser families in the world. Here’s what their market share looks like: The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) laid out a set of standards in an attempt to ‘homogenize’ how browsers render pages. So why does your web app not render the same across them all? They have different rendering engines. Safari and Opera are built on WebKit, but Chrome uses Blink, Firefox uses Gecko, and so on. These affect what your web pages look like on the client-side (to the users). Browser vendors don’t really implement W3C standards in the exact same way. : W3C laid out the track and set the rules, but browsers get to the finish line by finding their own shortcuts. Imagine a race And so it falls on developers to test across browsers. But nailing the right ones is difficult. Consider the chart below: There are two key takeaways from this data: Each browser family has multiple versions in the market, and these versions have their own (significant) market shares. Just look at Chrome and Safari.A browser version will behave differently on desktop and mobile. For instance: Chrome 76 on desktop vs Android. HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) works on all versions of Chrome for Android, but not on Chrome for desktop. Any version of Safari on macOS vs iOS. PNG favicons work perfectly on all versions of Safari on macOS, but not on any version of Safari for iOS. Now that you have context on browsers, platforms, and device types, here’s the final piece of the ideal coverage puzzle, particularly for web developers across the world. Screen resolution Here are the most popular screen resolutions across the world: To cover 80% of the global online traffic, you will need to test on 10 different screen resolutions. Takeaways For 70-80% global coverage, your website/app needs to work across: 3 device types—mobile, desktop, and tablet 2 iOS versions 5 stock Android versions 8-10 custom implementations of stock Android versions 6 browser families Popular browser versions within each browser family 10 screen resolutions If you multiply them, and leave room for healthy skepticism (not all browsers work on all operating systems), the number of possible combinations racks up to—pretty discouraging. And testing on them all will give you 80% global coverage for a brief few weeks. As you’re reading this, the market is evolving. Within the month, Chrome 77’s market share will increase. More Android smartphone manufacturers will have released platform updates and moved to a Pie-based implementation. iOS 13 jumped from 5% to 50% market share while we were writing this post. The only way to keep up with this market is through early, continuous compatibility testing. References: github.com/damithc, Damith C. Rajapakse, professor of Software Engineering at National University of Singapore. blog.globalwebindex.com, Device landscape. www.thenextweb.com, Android Phone brands ranked by update frequency. Statcounter.com, Deviceatlas.com; Global device, platform, browser, and screen resolution data. Statista.com, Number of users online in 2019. CanIuse.com, Browser version market share.

Understanding Browser and Device Fragmentation [A Deep Dive]

*Illustration by Regex SEO This article is a part of “Dear Developer, Make Your Life Easier” series. You can read one of the latest installments, the “ Top 10 Browser Console Hacks ” here . We’ve all been browsing on our phone or tablet and found a website that didn’t fit on our mobile screen and no amount of device rotation or screen manipulation would make it work. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to use a site that isn’t responsive to the type of device you’re using, when the browser console is full of errors, and nothing works the way it’s supposed to. In our world of instant gratification, . Users will just move on to the next search result and that traffic will be lost forever. no one sticks around on a non-responsive website As a website owner, it’s critical that your site is fully operational across not only multiple browsers, such as Chrome, Edge, and Safari, but that it also works effectively on all types of devices, including desktop, tablet, mobile, and more. Since mobile devices are constantly getting bigger screens, better resolutions, and releasing updates — that can affect how your site is displayed. Ensuring that your website displays and functions correctly isn’t a one-time test after launch; it’s something you’ll need to be checking regularly to ensure you aren’t losing hard-earned traffic due to problems with how a browser displays your site. Between is now done on mobile devices, so it’s critical to ensure your site works effectively across all types of devices. But how can you test against the huge number of mobile devices on the market, with new ones being released all the time? 70 to 80 percent of all web browsing Luckily, you don’t have to buy one of every type of web-capable device on the market to test your website’s effectiveness across different browsers and devices. You can use a browser testing tool. A browser testing tool, or browser emulator, will help you test website performance across multiple browsers and see if any errors appear or if any features aren’t functioning correctly, and ensure the design is displaying correctly and responsive across all browsers. Just as there are a lot of devices and browsers available, there are also a lot of tools for testing those browsers. Here are the top tools for testing your website on mobile devices. BrowserStack BrowserStack is more than a browser emulator. It allows you to test your website across more than 2,000 real devices and browsers all in one place. While some emulators focus on a certain type of device or browser, BrowserStack was built to provide results on all varieties of browsers and devices, including Android and iOS devices. It also allows you to run tests automatically, so you don’t have to do all the work manually. It can also help you locate the source of coding problems, to make finding a fix much faster. There is a cost for the service, depending on how many features you want and how many tests you want to run at a time. While BrowserStack is probably more advanced than what a business with a single website needs, it offers amazing insights to those who need to be monitoring website performance in various browsers. Other available programs with features similar to BrowserStack include: CrossBrowserTesting by SmartBear, LambdaTest, Browserling, Experitest, Functionize, and Sauce Labs. All of these are paid services that provide testing across a huge array of devices to ensure your website is always functioning correctly. ScreenFly ScreenFly is essentially the opposite of BrowserStack’s feature-rich offerings. ScreenFly is a back-to-basics online tool that allows you to see how your website looks on a variety of screens. You can check how the display appears on more than 30 popular devices, including televisions, Kindle devices, desktops, mobile phones, and tablets. While ScreenFly won’t help you breakdown where any problems are occurring, it’s an easy, and free, way to quickly check your site’s display and functionality on an array of popular devices. Plus, it’s very simple to use and will give you a good understanding of how your site appears on some of the most-used devices. Appetize.io If your digital footprint includes an app, in addition to your website, you’ll need an environment for testing that as well. Appetize.io allows you to test your mobile app on any device, regardless of the platform. So, if you’re working on an iOS app, but only have access to a PC, you can still test your app using Appetize.io. You’ll be able to mimic real-world conditions and debug problems quickly. If users are reporting problems from specific devices, you can quickly test the issue and get a fix out fast. This is a paid software, but it includes a free version for one user. Most importantly, it has all the features you need to ensure your app is operating seamlessly and offering your customers the best possible experience. Given the speed at which web technology is evolving, ongoing testing and monitoring of websites and mobile apps must become a non-negotiable part of your marketing strategy. Nothing wastes marketing dollars faster than directing users to a non-responsive website, and regular testing is the best way to ensure users are getting a quality experience on your site. Shameless Plug If you are not sure what causes your website to misbehave, take advantage of free website audit — we will find the issues in no time. Regex SEO Comments? This article is purely an opinion based on my work experience. If you had bad experiences with emulators I have cited, and have a better option, leave a comment below!

Top Mobile Browser Emulators: Developer's Humble Opinion

Note: My experience in customer development has been largely with SaaS (B2B) startups. Therefore, many of my lessons may not be directly applicable in a B2C scenario. I conducted a a few months ago, on customer development as part of the initiative. Much of the content in this post is derived from the notes I had prepared for that workshop. workshop ProductNation I’ve divided this post into the following 3 sections: What is Customer Development? How Customer Development Works Closing Notes In the 2 years I spent in the product and growth team at , I spoke with hundreds of customers on the phone. The primary objective of this customer development exercise at BrowserStack was to improve the product and build new features to drive growth for the company. BrowserStack What is Customer Development? Customer development is certainly not asking your customers what they want and then building it. What customer development really does is help identify the right problems to solve so that you build something that your customers will buy. Additionally, it helps you validate your hypothesis and assumptions. The idea is to spend more time speaking with your customers and less time and money on engineering and design. I cannot overemphasize the importance of identifying the right problems to solve. BrowserStack gets this right. I was told by the CEO there that solutions are relatively easy but identifying the right problem to solve is not. I couldn’t agree more. In sum, customer development doesn’t provide you with all the answers on what to build. But it definitely provides a better understanding of customers and a keener appreciation of the problems they grapple with. You will still need a founder or a product manager to sift through all the information to determine what is relevant, prioritize the inputs received and decide how to turn the inputs into a tangible feature or a product. How Customer Development Works? 1. Start With Your Hypotheses A good point to start the the process of customer development is with some hypotheses you’re trying to validate. If you’re building a new product from scratch, there will be some hypotheses you have about the industry or the problems you think your potential customers face. Your logical next step then would be to get on a call with your potential customers and find out as much as you can about their problems before you even start building anything. This step is applicable to even a small feature you’re trying to build for an already existing product. For example, in BrowserStack, one of the hypotheses we had was that occasional usage of the product was one of the biggest contributing factors to a high churn rate. Therefore, our customer development exercise in this case was focused on understanding the behavior and day-to-day activities of our customers and the availability of alternatives as a result of which they were canceling their subscriptions. 2. Identify Your Users In order to validate your hypothesis, you need to speak with your customers or your potential customers if you don’t already have a product. Therefore, let’s first identify who your ideal customers are or who your ideal customers could be. You should be able to define your ideal customers through a mix of the following parameters: . Let’s call the different sets of ideal customers created through the parameters above as user personas. For example, in BrowserStack, one of the personas was in in the . Industry, Size of company (based on the number of employees or revenue), Region, Role/Function, Title QA Managers Enterprises (1000+ employees) Technology (Software) industry 3. Create a List of Users to Speak With Once you’ve identified your user personas, you need to create an actual list of users you could speak with. If you already have a product that is being used by customers, then creating the list is not a problem. However, do note that the user personas of your free and paid product could be different and you will need to speak with the relevant ones based on the problem you’re trying to solve. If you’re building a new product, in addition to reaching out to your personal network, you could also scour LinkedIn for potential contacts and get in touch with them over LinkedIn itself or through Twitter. Quora could also be a place where you could identify people you could speak with. Once you start this exercise, you will realize that people are actually not that averse to speaking with you. They do it for different reasons. At BrowserStack, people loved the product and they loved propagating the product in their organization. Who wouldn’t want to be known as the person who introduced and evangelized an amazing product in their company? We had many such users at BrowserStack. Scheduling calls with them was a breeze. Some others are just willing to help. And many others feel important when you tell them that this exercise is limited to a certain number of people and that their inputs would help shape the future of a product or a business. 4. Get in Touch With Your Users Once you’ve created this list of users, reach out to them through email to schedule a call or an in-person meeting. Among the customers you reach out to, the response rates for the ones willing to get on the phone with you depend on how you sell to your customers. For self-service sales (as was the case with BrowserStack), around 20% of the free users (those without a subscription) I reached out to were willing to get on the phone with me. For paid users, the response rate was as high as 50% to 70%. For inside-sales or field sales (as is the case at , the startup I work with currently), almost all the customers want to speak with me. WebEngage Following is an example of an email I had sent to some of our registered users on BrowserStack who had not purchased a subscription. Once they responded with an answer, I was successful in requesting them to get on the phone with me to answer some of the other questions I had based on their first reply. Example of an email I sent to customers at BrowserStack I have a slight preference for conducting customer development studies over the phone than through in-person meetings. I can take notes during the call without distracting the customer whereas taking notes in an in-person meeting can be a distraction for the other person. I have done some customer development studies on Email as well but these have been mostly for very specific questions I had. I personally don’t prefer online surveys. I think these should only be done when you already have some options/solutions in mind and you’re only seeking help from your customers to validate and prioritize. If you’re doing customer development over the phone, take into consideration the timezone your users reside in and suggest time-slots to them based on their time zones. Use or to figure out where your customers are located. Also, ask them for their mobile numbers specifically. I’ve had people not join the scheduled conference calls in the past as they forgot about it or missed the calendar reminder. And I tend to now ask them directly for their mobile numbers as the odds of the call happening are much better in this case. LinkedIn Rapportive Lastly, for the emails you send out to schedule these calls, remember to follow up with a 2nd email to those who did not respond to your 1st email. I cannot overemphasize the power of the follow up. Half my calls at BrowserStack got scheduled through the follow up! Needless to say the emails have to be personalized. Nobody likes signing up for some generic customer study. Here’s an example of a follow-up email I had sent to the customers at BrowserStack: Example of a follow-up email I sent to customers at BrowserStack 5. Ask Your Users These Questions In this section, I’ll cover some of the questions I always ask customers. This is not an exhaustive list and your exact list of questions will differ based on the hypothesis you’re trying to validate. I generally tend to prepare around 15 to 20 questions that I need answers to during the call. Of course, the order in which I ask my questions is dynamic and depends completely on how the call is going. In my experience, open-ended questions work much better than close-ended ones. I tend to not ask the user to choose among options or what they think about a particular solution. I’ve realized that I only end up biasing the user or constraining their thinking with such close-ended questions. An example of a close-ended question is ? Instead of asking the user to choose between two options, I tend to ask more questions about the problem the user is facing. Do you prefer A or B Following are some basic questions I usually include in my customer development calls: About the company (what it does, industry, number of employees) About the person (objectives, responsibilities at work etc.) Their single biggest challenge and other problems they face The last time they faced the problem(s) and how often do they face it. This helps you in understanding whether the problem is occasional or if it is persistent. It might be difficult to build a business around a product that solves only occasional problems for a user How does this problem impact their business or how much time and money does this problem cost their company. This helps in understanding the gravity of the problem. Even if the problem is persistent, if it doesn’t cost the customer substantial time and money, he/she wouldn’t be that keen on solving the problem How are they currently solving the problem? Even if the user claims that the problem is persistent and that it results in a substantial loss of time and money, let’s try to validate this. If the problem is big enough, the user would already have some sort of solution to alleviate the problem. If there is no solution currently, then is the problem as grave as the user is making it out to be? Problems with their current solution If there was anything I didn’t ask them that I should have 6. Take Notes & Summarize Take copious notes during your call. Record your calls so that you can refer to them later. As soon as your call is done, create a summary of what was discussed during the call. When you start doing multiple such calls in a day, it becomes difficult to remember who said what. Once all your calls are done, create a summary of all the call logs in one place. Look for patterns in the summary and try converting these patterns into solid findings. Based on these findings you will be able to determine the plan of action for your product. Of course, this entire customer development process is iterative in nature. You will take these inputs, build a product or feature or create a strategy and put that into practice, do more of the customer development to validate what you’ve built and so on. Lastly, while the process of customer development is continuous in nature where you’re speaking with your customers on almost a daily/weekly/fortnightly basis, the majority of customer development tends to happen in the initial stages when you’re trying to validate your hypothesis. Closing Notes You will start seeing some patterns as soon you have made between 10 and 15 calls. Later user interactions tend to yield similar patterns. Hence, you may decide to conclude customer development studies for the your hypothesis when you stop hearing new things. Each call can take anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes. I would not suggest doing more than 4 customer development calls or meetings in a day as the process can be exhausting. Remember, in addition to just speaking with your customers, you’re also taking notes and summarizing the discussion as soon as you’re done with the call. If your product has been in the market for a few years, you could also consider putting together a that you can depend on for testing your initial hypothesis and for validating your solution. While I was at BrowserStack, our competitor had put together this board. This made their customers feel important. So much so that some of them had updated their LinkedIn profile to mention that they were a part of this board. Customer Advisory Board SauceLabs At BrowserStack, we employed customer development to build features addressing a number of problems eg. increasing conversion, reducing churn, revamping pricing etc. In the future, I will cover some of the specifics of how we went about solving these problems and the role that customer development played in tackling these problems.

How to Use Customer Development to Build Your Product

Software Regression Testing: Enhanced Regression Strategy and Zero Defects

সফ্টওয়্যার রিগ্রেশন টেস্টিং: উন্নত রিগ্রেশন কৌশল এবং শূন্য ত্রুটি

Software-Regressionstests: Verbesserte Regressionsstrategie und Null-Fehler

Pruebas de regresión de software: estrategia de regresión mejorada y cero defectos

Tests de régression logicielle : stratégie de régression améliorée et zéro défaut

सॉफ्टवेयर रिग्रेशन परीक्षण: उन्नत रिग्रेशन रणनीति और शून्य दोष

ソフトウェア回帰テスト: 強化された回帰戦略とゼロ欠陥

소프트웨어 회귀 테스트: 향상된 회귀 전략 및 제로 결함

Teste de regressão de software: estratégia de regressão aprimorada e zero defeitos

Регрессионное тестирование программного обеспечения: расширенная стратегия регрессии и нулевые дефекты

Yazılım Regresyon Testi: Gelişmiş Regresyon Stratejisi ve Sıfır Hata

Kiểm tra hồi quy phần mềm: Chiến lược hồi quy nâng cao và không có lỗi

软件回归测试：增强回归策略和零缺陷

In web development, staying ahead with the best tools is crucial for enhancing productivity, simplifying workflows, and delivering top-notch projects. Especially as this tech progresses at a rapid rate… While there are tons of entertainment, marketing and , there are also tons of great resources for anyone more in tune with the technical side of the web. productivity apps for Google Chrome So I’ve gone through and picked out some of the best Chrome extensions for developers in 2024 and beyond. Some of these you might already know about, some might be new to you. Many of these are either freemium or come with a free trial. So you can start using them and see if it works for you and then upgrade to the premium version later. So let’s check out some of these cool dev tools for Chrome. Marker.io Revolutionizing the way developers handle bug reporting and feedback, Marker.io is a game changer for devs who want to iron out those glitches before it's too late. Gone are the days of disjointed workflows and cumbersome bug-tracking methods. With Marker.io, you can effortlessly capture issues, annotate them for clarity, and directly integrate them into your project management tools. This seamless integration bridges the gap between identifying and solving problems, streamlining the development process, and enhancing team collaboration. BrowserStack BrowserStack is a beacon for ensuring cross-browser and cross-device compatibility, a challenge every web developer faces. By offering a platform for real-time testing, BrowserStack offers access to an extensive range of browsers and devices right there from your desktop. Using BrowserStack ensures your web applications perform flawlessly, delivering a consistent user experience. As a developer, knowing that your projects will stand up to the diverse ways users will interact with your content is crucial to a successful (and glitch free) launch. Save yourself a bunch of headaches here…. If you’re looking for a cool dev tool for Chrome that brings confidence to your launches, you need a this one in the tool kit. Cyber Ghost VPN We all know what a VPN is. But for web developers, a Chrome VPN extension such as CyberGhost is indispensable for secure and anonymous web browsing. A good VPN allows developers to test geo-specific features, access content restricted in certain regions, and ensure the privacy and security of their online activities. A reliable VPN extension in Chrome ensures developers can safely connect to various web services and APIs, simulate different user locations, and protect their internet connection from potential threats. Fake Filler Fake Filler is the ultimate time-saver for developers engaged in repetitive testing activities. This extension intelligently fills out forms with dummy data, allowing you to bypass the tedium of manual entry. It's not just about speed; it's about creating a more realistic testing environment by populating forms with credible, test-ready information. Fake Filler enables developers to focus on what truly matters—perfecting their projects' functionality and user experience. Loom You might have seen Loom used for webinars or sharing course information. But it's also super useful for developers too. In fact, Loom brings a new dimension to sharing and collaboration among development teams and clients. With the ability to create concise, informative video recordings, Loom eliminates misunderstandings and provides a clear visual context to discussions. Whether detailing a bug or walking through a feature, using Loom enhances communication, making remote collaboration more effective and personal. What's more, it also saves you having to jump on yet another meeting that could have been an email (or in this case, a Loom). LT Debug LT Debug transforms your browser into a powerful debugging workstation. With features like modifying HTTP headers and simulating network conditions, LT Debug equips developers with the tools to uncover and address issues directly from the browser. This is great for gaining insights into how web applications behave under various conditions. And of course, this testing ensures robustness and reliability in the face of real-world challenges. Something that you know that app will need to be ready for… Web Developer Checklist Ths tool from Toptal is like having a vigilant mentor that ensures no critical aspect of web development is overlooked. From SEO to mobile responsiveness, this extension scrutinizes your web pages against best practices, highlighting areas for improvement. Web Developer Checklist is invaluable for maintaining high standards and ensuring your projects are complete and polished. And plus, when you’re juggling 85 things at the same time, it’s a really useful way to make sure nothing slips through the gaps. Wappalyzer Wappalyzer is your insight tool into the building blocks of any website. Wappalyzer offers a peek behind the curtain by identifying the technologies used, revealing the CMS, server software, and JavaScript libraries powering sites. This knowledge satisfies curiosity and serves as a learning tool and a competitive intelligence resource, helping you stay abreast of industry trends and choices. ModHeader Another super handy debugging tool, ModHeader offers some great flexibility in testing and debugging web applications. By allowing you to modify request and response headers, ModHeader enables you to mimic various states and scenarios without the need to alter backend code. It's a tool that is designed to improve experimentation and innovation, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in web development. Requestly One more for the debug set. Requestly is a Swiss Army knife for modifying network requests and responses, empowering developers to test, debug, and optimize web applications efficiently. Whether redirecting URLs, mocking APIs, or streamlining front-end development processes, Requestly provides a comprehensive set of features that cater to a wide range of development needs. This one is great for controlling the web environment, enabling developers to tailor their work to their testing requirements. WAVE WAVE goes beyond mere compliance, advocating for a web accessible to all. By evaluating web content for accessibility issues, WAVE helps developers meet legal requirements. It embraces a more inclusive approach to web design. It's a tool that champions universal access, ensuring that web projects are usable by everyone, including those with disabilities. Lighthouse A really useful open source tool, Lighthouse is like a beacon guiding developers toward excellence in web performance, accessibility, and SEO. By providing comprehensive audits and actionable feedback, Lighthouse helps developers optimize their sites, ensuring they are fast, accessible, and search engine friendly. An essential tool for modern web development, where performance and user experience are paramount. JSONView JSONView brings clarity to the often murky waters of JSON data. Using JSONView makes it easy to inspect, debug, and understand API responses by formatting and highlighting JSON directly in the browser. As most devs know, getting a clear view of your work as you go can really help to smooth out the process later on. A great tool for turning raw data into insight, facilitating a smoother development process when working with web services. Clear Session Too many settings and cookies making things more complex than you need? Clear Session is your digital reset button, offering a quick way to clear browsing data for a fresh start. Whether it's testing user flows from scratch or ensuring that cached data doesn't interfere with development work, Clear Session provides a one-click solution to common challenges faced by developers. When it comes to maintaining a clean slate, where each test is as reliable and accurate as the first, this is a super useful dev Chrome extension. VisBug Ever wished you could just click and fix things right there in the browser? Well, thats what VisBug is for! VisBug empowers developers to fine-tune web designs directly in the browser. It's like having a set of design superpowers, allowing you to adjust layouts, experiment with colors, and tweak typography on the fly. This great Chrome extension for developers bridges the gap between design and development, facilitating real-time collaboration and iterative design improvements. Grepper Hunting for code snippets doesn’t need to be time consuming or tedious. Grepper is your shortcut to coding solutions, integrating seamlessly with search results to provide immediate access to a wealth of code snippets and programming wisdom. It accelerates the problem-solving process, offering developers a quick way to find answers and learn from the collective knowledge of the programming community. uBlock Origin Do you love ads? Yeah who does, right…? uBlock Origin is more than an ad blocker. It's a guardian of the developer's online environment. By eliminating distractions and potential malware threats, uBlock Origin ensures a safer and more focused browsing experience, allowing developers to concentrate on their work without interruption. Vimium With the headline ‘The Hackers Browser’, Vimium brings the efficiency of Vim keyboard shortcuts to the web browser, enhancing productivity for developers accustomed to the speed and precision of Vim. Super handy dev extension for minimizing reliance on the mouse, streamlining navigation, and making web browsing a more keyboard-centric experience. OctoTree OctoTree enhances the GitHub experience, providing an organized, tree-like view of repositories. This makes code exploration and review more intuitive and efficient, especially in large projects. OctoTree is the tool that makes GitHub navigation a breeze, saving time and enhancing code comprehension. Dark Reader Do you enjoy the visual strain of long coding sessions? Well, if you don’t, you’re in luck.  With its dark mode for every website, Dark Reader creates a comfortable development environment, reducing eye strain, and making the web a more visually appealing place for those who prefer darker aesthetics. And as it reduces the strain on the eyes and makes those migraines a little less inevitable, this is definitely an essential Chrome extension for any software developer or coder spending hours looking at their screen. LanguageTool We can’t all be proofreaders as well as devs. So LanguageTool ensures that your web content is technically sound and linguistically polished. By checking grammar and style in real-time, LanguageTool helps developers present their projects in the best possible linguistic light, enhancing readability and professionalism. Save yourself the embarrassment of spotting an obvious error later and download LanguageTool. So there you have it, my pick of the best Chrome extensions for in 2024 (so far). I think there’s something for everybody in here, so enjoy! web developers

20 Chrome Extensions for Web Developers 2024

I. Introduction Web applications keep getting more advanced and multifaceted, providing users with tons of features. But this also makes them more vulnerable to performance problems, especially when handling lots of requests simultaneously. That can lead to slow response times, crashes, errors, and even downtime - all of which hurt the user experience and company reputation. To make sure web apps deliver high-quality service and meet user expectations, it's crucial to do load testing. Load testing simulates real user scenarios and measures how the app handles different load levels. It can identify and fix bottlenecks, optimize resources, improve scalability, and ensure reliability and availability. Mastering load testing for web apps takes understanding the basics, the process, tools, best practices, common pitfalls, and future trends. So, let's dive in and take a look. II. Load Testing Basics Before we get into the process and tools for load testing, let's first define what load testing is and the key metrics used. Definition Load testing simulates realistic user traffic to see how a web application handles varying load levels. It should be done on all the steps of the software lifecycle like development, integration, and deployment. The main goals are to: Verify that the app can handle expected and peak traffic without hurting performance. Find and fix bottlenecks that cause slow responses, crashes, errors, or downtime. Optimize resource use like CPU, memory, disk, and network by tuning configs. Improve scalability by determining max capacity and throughput, and how to increase them. Ensure reliability and availability by testing recovery from failures and consistent performance. Key Metrics To evaluate performance under load, we measure key metrics like: - how long requests take to process and respond. Affects user satisfaction so should be low. Response time - requests handled per unit of time. Indicates efficiency and capacity so should be high. Throughput - the percentage of failed requests. Indicates reliability so should be low. Error rate - resources consumed during testing like CPU, memory, etc. Should be within acceptable limits. Resource utilization III. The Load Testing Process The load testing process consists of four main steps: identifying workload and performance requirements, test scenarios and environment setup, test execution, and result analysis. Identifying Workload and Performance Requirements The first step in load testing is defining the expected performance and goals under different loads. This includes: - The minimum response time, throughput, etc. that should be met. Performance requirements - How users interact with the app. This covers user types, actions, locations, concurrency, arrival rate, think time, and more. Workload - The normal, peak, and stress loads that will be tested. Load levels These points should be realistic, based on business needs, user feedback, historical data, industry benchmarks, and other sources. Test Scenarios and Environment Setup The next step is designing a test plan and setting up the test environment to execute the load tests. The test cases should cover the most critical and frequently used functions, as well as the riskiest scenarios under load. They should align with the workload model and load levels. The test environment should mirror production as closely as possible in terms of hardware, software, network, configs, data, etc. It should include: - Generates and sends requests per the test cases and workload model. Load generator - Distributes requests across multiple app instances or servers. Load balancer - The app being tested. Application under test - Collects and displays performance metrics of the app and components during testing. Monitoring system Test Execution and Result Analysis The third step in load testing is to execute the test cases and analyze the results. The test execution should be done according to a predefined test plan that specifies the order, duration, frequency, and intensity of each test case. The test execution should also be monitored and controlled by adjusting the load levels, stopping, or restarting the tests, etc. The result analysis should be done by comparing the actual performance metrics with the performance requirements and identifying any deviations or anomalies. The result analysis should also include identifying and diagnosing the root causes of any performance issues, such as code defects, configuration errors, resource bottlenecks, etc. Test Reporting and Improvement The final step is reporting the findings and recommendations and implementing improvements based on the analysis. The test report should summarize the objectives, methodology, environment, execution, results, analysis, findings, recommendations, and conclusions. It should include supporting data like graphs, charts, tables, screenshots, logs, etc. Improvements may involve applying fixes or optimizations to the code, configs, architecture, design, etc. Changes should be verified by re-running load tests to validate their effectiveness. IV. Load Testing Tools A diverse array of tools exists for load-testing web applications, each with unique capabilities. , an open-source Java tool, enables load generation and performance measurement across various protocols like HTTP, WebSocket, and FTP. It provides recording, scripting, dynamic data simulation, result analysis, and more. Extensibility through plugins is a key benefit. JMeter by Micro Focus excels at load testing beyond just the web, with support for mobile, IoT, and media. Scripting uses languages like C and JavaScript. Visual analysis is facilitated through dashboards. LoadRunner , written in Scala, separates test logic from execution for scalability. Recording HTTP sessions and converting them to code accelerates test creation. Interactive charts empower insightful results analysis. Gatling leverages Python for load test scripting. Its master-slave architecture readily scales simulated users across multiple machines. An intuitive web interface displays live test metrics. Locust These tools and many others each have unique strengths. Careful selection based on the technology, test environment, metrics, integrations, and workflows to be assessed is advised. Thorough evaluation guides the way to the optimal choice. V. Best Practices and Common Pitfalls Mastering the art of load testing requires adhering to key best practices while avoiding frequent missteps. To conduct effective load testing: Set clear, realistic performance targets based on business needs, user feedback, historical data, and industry benchmarks. Don't define criteria that are unattainably high or low; Design comprehensive test cases that cover critical functions and probable high-risk scenarios under load. Align cases to workload models and load levels; Pay special attention to possible peak load scenarios: new marketing campaign planned and a lot of new users expected? Make sure to test the registration and login parts. Black Friday coming? Check scenarios for huge simultaneous checkouts; Build a test environment that closely resembles production in terms of hardware, software, network, configs, and data. Isolate it from anything that could skew results; Use capable, reliable load-testing tools that can simulate workflows and measure metrics accurately per the technology stack. Avoid inappropriate or unstable tools; Make sure test servers and bandwidth can generate the load required for testing. Using one request-generating server to test 100 servers might not generate the required load that would result in incorrect test results; Execute load tests per a systematic plan defining order, duration, frequency, and intensity. Monitor and adjust load levels carefully during execution; Analyse results by comparing metrics to criteria and diagnosing issues through data visualization and statistics. Avoid raw data or unclear graphs; Implement optimizations, then re-test to validate improvements. Don't deploy changes without verifying effectiveness. Common pitfalls to avoid: Inaccurate performance targets leading to false positives or negatives; Incomplete test cases missing critical functions and scenarios; Unrealistic test environments that skew metrics due to differences from production; Poorly matched tools that can't simulate workflows, generate required load, or measure metrics properly; Lack of execution plan causing disorganized, inefficient test runs; Weak analysis lacking visualization and statistics to surface meaningful insights; Failure to re-test and validate the impact of optimizations before deployment. VI. Future Trends in Load Testing Load testing continues to evolve as web development advances. Key emerging trends include: leverages scalable cloud computing services like and for benefits such as flexibility, cost savings, and geographic reach. The cloud enables large-scale distributed testing. Cloud-based load testing BlazeMeter Grafana Cloud k6 are transforming load testing through intelligent automation. AI can generate realistic workloads, predict metrics, diagnose issues, and recommend solutions. Tools like , , and incorporate these technologies. Artificial intelligence and machine learning Dynatrace Neoload Apica helps identify and prevent vulnerabilities under load. , and are examples of WAST tools that can detect risks like denial-of-service attacks and cross-site scripting. Integrating web application security testing (WAST) OWASP ZAP , Nmap Burp Suite Mastering these emerging practices will be key for load testing excellence as the web evolves. Forward-looking organizations are already putting them into practice. VII. Conclusion Mastering load testing is critical for releasing high-performing web applications. It requires blending technical and analytical expertise to model realistic user behaviors, select appropriate tools, develop comprehensive test cases, conduct controlled experiments, and extract meaningful performance insights. As technology evolves, agile adaptation alongside diligent mastery of load testing fundamentals will remain key. By building robust in-house competencies or working with experienced partners, organizations can gain a significant competitive advantage through expertise in this vital discipline. References Top 15 Open-Source Load Testing Software 2023 | TestGuild 9 Load Testing Best Practices (Don't Make These Mistakes) (testguild.com) Load testing best practices  |  Cloud Run Documentation  |  Google Cloud What is Load Testing: Process, Tools, & Best Practices | BrowserStack Load Testing Best Practices (multiple.dev)

Mastering the Art of Load Testing for Web Applications

98 Stories To Learn About Best Practices

A website serves as a crucial gateway for new business opportunities. Building a new website or redesigning one can be a challenging journey.  After leading the redesign of my company’s website, I decided to share a bit of our journey. If you are considering building a new website or redesigning your current one, we hope this will help you by making your journey smoother. Assessment Our website is an important entry door for new business for us. Being a web development boutique, how we present ourselves online tells a lot about our work and what customers can expect when working with us. Once we decided we wanted to create a new website to match our new brand, it was clear to us that we had to walk the talk and show our customers and audience a good quality website. Our team put a lot of thought and effort into the preparation phase before starting to work. We started with a simple question: Why Do We Need a Website or Redesign? This is an excellent way to keep the focus on your goals and avoid getting sidetracked. Once we understood our why, we then went through the process of Identifying Our Target audience. To whom we were building this website. It’s essential to clearly understand who you’re trying to reach and what you want them to know about your brand and work. We then started thinking about the Message We Wanted to Pass to that audience, how we wanted to be seen and, most importantly, how we could prove that we were good at what we do. A big part of this message was thought through during the brand creation (Check ), and we had to transmit that into the new website. how we created our new brand Since we already had an online presence, we took some time to Evaluate Our Old Website and list the features and aspects that we felt were working well and what we felt was missing. It was also very important in this whole process to follow up with a Competitors Benchmark to try to understand what companies in our industry were doing. We also look around on other types of websites to get references and inspiration. This gave us some valuable insights and helped us to avoid repeating mistakes or missing out on essential features. The final step of this preparation phase was the List of Features and Functionalities we wanted to have on our website. This was like creating a wish list like we could do everything we wanted. The list was later prioritized, and we selected the features that were a MUST and the ones that were a NICE TO HAVE that could be implemented later on. It is important to focus on the most critical elements first. Some of those steps were done together with the entire team. Being a small team, we wanted to have everyone involved in this process to some extent. After this first assessment, we started to divide and conquer and had dedicated team members responsible for transforming our new website into a reality. Design We were excited to dive into the Design Process for our web project. UI/UX Design is a critical aspect of any web project. We had a multidisciplinary team involved, but the designer was the show’s star, responsible for creating the visual representation of the message we wanted to pass on to our audience. It was essential for the designer to clearly understand the project’s needs and expectations to convey our message visually and structure the content accordingly. We aimed for a concise, engaging design with the right tone. During this phase of the project, we followed these steps: We adopted a user-centric approach right from the start. We focused on how our target audience would perceive and interact with us. This is why we began by working on the Information Architecture, deciding on the pages, sections, and components needed and creating a first draft of the copy. Next, we created low-fi wireframes to provide a rough, low-fidelity representation of the layout and functionality. It allowed us to test and experiment with ideas before investing too much time and effort into the design. We also considered the general user flow at this stage. This phase was critical as it laid the foundation for the whole landscape of components to be used: creating a Design System. We built a library using that included design patterns, guidelines, and examples. This library was a single source of truth, ensuring coherence between all UI elements and setting the groundwork for scalability when introducing new components. Figma Once the design system was defined, we built the layouts in High Fidelity. We applied the UI to the lo-fi wireframes created until then. At this stage, the design was fully tested for compliance with accessibility requirements, and we drew more refined conclusions regarding the content display. We used throughout the process, which made it easier to collaborate with the team and make iterations. After a few iterations, we had an optimal version that our developers could work on. Figma Development We focused on selecting the tech stack and implementing the designs in the project's development phase. We worked in sprints based on a product backlog with user stories created by our project manager. Choosing tech stack As the design phase progressed, we investigated which technologies best fit the website we wanted to build. Our developers were able to determine this based on the results of the previous phases. Choosing the right tech stack has become more important than ever in today’s world, as many options are available. We considered various criteria, such as the project’s requirements, the team’s expertise, availability of resources, costs, performance, security, and scalability. We wanted a simple, fast, and beautiful website for this project. We adopted a modular approach, breaking down the website’s components, features, and functionality into smaller, reusable components. This approach allowed us to reuse components across different parts of the website, facilitating collaboration among developers and designers, making it easier to test and maintain what was developed, and ultimately allowing for improved performance and reduced page load times. Our developers advocated for , an all-in-one web framework for fast, content-focused websites. They were looking forward to trying out the fastest content-focused framework out there. Three things caught our team’s attention: server-side rendering, performance results, and flexibility. Astro With the simple website we were going for, we did not need a fully-fledged Content Management System (CMS), but we wanted to enable non-technical team members to work on the website. We extensively researched different CMS options and ultimately chose Sanity due to its robust features and ease of use. also had great documentation and a very generous free tier. Sanity In addition to Astro and Sanity, we also decided to use for our project. Well, we always do. Netlify’s seamless deployment and hosting capabilities usually is our go-to Content Delivery Network (CDN). We also used various libraries for animations, which we discussed more in-depth in another blog post (coming soon). Netlify One aspect for improvement was the form we created for potential customers to reach out to us. We used Netlify’s form, which turned out to be not the best option due to the Forms’ issues with Astro. We found a solution (hot-fix) and created a single page for our contact form. We are still considering how to change this for the future. Development process Before starting with the development phase, the project manager created a product backlog with details on all the features and functionalities to be built by the team. These user stories made the development process smooth and transparent. Before building the website, the team had to prioritize the features and functionalities that would be part of the first website delivery. For the code repository, we used and utilized its Project Management boards and sprint planning features. GH is usually our choice for Version Control System, but we have started using and are loving it for project management. GitHub (GH) Notion Projects We started implementing the designs. We followed the agile methodology and worked in sprints to ensure we were on track and delivering results within the set timelines. One small note: this was an internal project, and our main priority was on our client’s projects. This means the sprints would happen soon after our team caught a break from other projects. This is not usually how we work, but it was how we managed this and a lesson learned not to repeat it. Another critical point in making the whole development process transparent and agile was to have a staging link right from the start of the project. Everyone involved in the project had access to it, and we could see the progress being made, give feedback, and make changes and small adaptations when we felt it was needed. During the development phase, the marketing team was able to start inserting content. This helped them get used to Sanity and contributed to more realistic feedback rounds. Overall, the development phase was a collaborative effort that involved the entire team working together to achieve the project’s objectives. Quality Assurance During development, one or two developers tested every feature and functionality. All code went through code review, and in the end, we did a final sprint for testing and ensuring the website was working as it should. The usability and accessibility testing was already done during the design phase, as described above. For general tests, we used the user stories and the acceptance criteria created by our project manager to guide us. Functional testing: confirm that all the features were working as expected. Performance test: check speed load and other scores using Lighthouse. Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing: Test the website on various web browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) to ensure compatibility and a consistent user experience. For this, we used . Their product is very intuitive to use and allows for a lot of tests. BrowserStack Go-live Preparation We were all set to make the website live on the staging link, but before we proceeded with it, two crucial things had to be carefully considered- redirecting to the new domain and SEO. Since we planned to change the domain, ensuring that our SEO ranking didn’t take a hit was crucial. Therefore, we decided to use 301 redirects to inform search engines and browsers that the original URL had been replaced permanently with a new one. Here’s what we did: List of all the pages from the current website: If the URL structure of a page was kept the same, confirm the 301 redirect was working. When the old page URL is not on the new website, create a redirect to the most appropriate page. List the pages indexed in Google to ensure we had redirects in place for all of them. Use Netlify to redirect everything, following the steps in their . Netlify Documentation Notify Google about the change on the Console’s tool. Change of Address Ask Google to reindex the new domain so old pages don’t appear. This was done directly in the Google Console, following the steps available in the Google Console Documentation. Last but definitely not least, we took the time to work on making sure we had considered best practices for better SEO ranking and pinpointed what needed to be improved. The marketing team made sure to go through the following: To optimize the new website for relevant keywords looking to rank higher in search engine results and attract organic traffic, we follow with a keyword search using tools such as Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to discover popular and less competitive keywords We tried as much as possible to optimize meta title tags and meta descriptions on each webpage, incorporating relevant keywords and compelling calls-to-action to entice users to click through from search engine result pages (SERPs) Ensured the URLs were clean, concise, and included targeted keywords Alt Text: Provide descriptive alt text for images, utilizing keywords where appropriate Confirm Page Speed Optimization (with the stack we used, it was hard not to have a great result here). Result Well, it was a long journey until we had our website live. But guess what? The work continued beyond launch. The first phase was a strong base for what we wanted to achieve. Building it in a modular approach also gave us the flexibility to iterate, change and adapt the website to new trends and needs. We are happy with the result and proud of how we got here. We hope that by sharing our journey, you know what to expect when building a new website or redesigning one. To summarise everything we have shared here, we have prepared a small cheat-sheet so you can use this on your project. Also published . here

The 4 Stages of Great Website Design (With Cheatsheet!)

দুর্দান্ত ওয়েবসাইট ডিজাইনের 4টি পর্যায় (চিটশিট সহ!)

Die 4 Phasen eines großartigen Website-Designs (mit Cheatsheet!)

Las 4 etapas de un gran diseño de sitios web (¡con hoja de referencia!)

Les 4 étapes d'une bonne conception de site Web (avec aide-mémoire !)

बेहतरीन वेबसाइट डिज़ाइन के 4 चरण (चीटशीट के साथ!)

優れたウェブサイトデザインの 4 つの段階 (チートシート付き!)

훌륭한 웹사이트 디자인의 4단계(치트시트 포함!)

Os 4 estágios de um ótimo design de site (com cheatsheet!)

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优秀网站设计的 4 个阶段（附备忘单！）

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BROWSERSTACK

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Since n.d.

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