Website Performance and Cross-Browser Compatibility

Cross-browser compatibility is a priority that can no longer be ignored. Balance between pre-release quality assurance testing and ongoing monitoring of a production site in a cross-browser environment needs to be understood.  To prove website performance in every major browser, cross browser issues need to be identified and resolved while the site is being built. This ensures pages are loaded correctly across which ever browser the user uses.

The ultimate purpose of website performance monitoring is to monitor and keep up the robustness of the entire site infrastructure – performance and availability.

Many of these issues are browser-agnostic – if the server has an outage, it’s out for all browsers – but some do involve specific browsers. Microsoft recommends developers use a strategy of detecting for specific features rather than for different browsers. Whichever strategy is used, the most critical step in the multiple-browser development process is detailed, comprehensive pre-release quality assurance testing.  A very thorough solution includes end-user monitoring using live installations of the two leading browsers, IE and Firefox. Regular scheduled testing with an alternate browser needs to be supplemented with continuous monitoring with one of the major browsers.