Testing Web-Based Systems

When the system is ‘web-based’ or has web components, testing effort should be increased to allow for full useability testing and for testing against different browser versions and platforms. Web pages are subject to many types of web interfaces and require more extensive useability testing than standard structured and controlled graphical user interface screens. Web-based systems have a number of characteristics that necessitate additional care during testing:

• There is less (or no) control over the environment in which the system will run. Generally, the environment for an Intranet based system can be controlled to some extent, whereas for a system on the World Wide Web, there is no control;
• The system may need to run using different browsers and under a number of different versions;
• There is little opportunity to train end-users and their actions and logic are not easily predicted;
• There is no capability of controlling the sequence of events that an end-user may invoke.

Consequently, testing of web pages is often less structured, allowing the testers free reign in their (test) use of the system, possibly with an observer or recording mechanism to monitor events. Test Plan preparation will need to allow for this.