This week, I’m pleased to feature a bonus bug of the week, courtesy of long-time reader John Singleton. He wrote to tell us:

Rex,

I was posting some comments in response to your blog post, entitled “Bad Agile Implementation Causes Software Test Challenges”.  For whatever reason, the Submit button was entirely non-responsive in Firefox. Thankfully, switching over to IE resolved it.

Not griping, just thought you’d want to know. Good, thoughtful response you gave.

Cheers,

John

I responded:

Hi John–

That’s weird. It’s usually the other way around with WordPress (the software we use for our blog): Firefox works when IE doesn’t. I guess we have a bonus bug of the week.

Glad you liked the post. I’m looking forward to your comments.

Regards,

Rex

So, while this isn’t a very serious bug, it is part of a very serious pattern: Failure of major players in the web world to test browser compatibility.  See my previous posts http://bit.ly/mdBIRY and http://bit.ly/mPkD9z.  Is this a lack of understanding of basic test design techniques such as equivalence partitioning and (for particularly risky situations) pairwise testing?  Or just a lack of caring?

I have to say that this pattern is not universal.  Working with a major e-commerce client this week, I was pleased to see that they include testing of most of the major browsers, covering the equivalence partitions. 

What do you think about this pattern?  Are you in the web world, and, if so, do you test browser compatibility?  If not, why?