How do they know?

21 May

I was asked an interesting question the other day – How do websites know they are being accessed by a mobile device? In my mind, it magically happens but in reality, the device sends information over to the webserver in its user agent string (contained in the user-agent http header). This way the server can determine what device and/or operating system the webpage will be displayed on and take appropriate actions. Developers, those smart little devils, can make it so that the webpage displays differently on smaller mobile screens than on larger desktop screens. How cool is that?

Some popular user-agent strings can be found onhttps://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/user-agent.

This means when testing websites it’s important to consider whether there is a need to test on more than one device. Have the developers coded for more than one device? Is the behaviour different depending on whether the website is accessed from a desktop or an iPhone, for example? Is there a need to test that the right page is displayed on the right devices in the correct manner? Is the information truncated? Is it readable or too busy?

When testing websites and web applications, I like to consider not only whether functionality works on the various “user agents” but also how reliable it is, whether it crashes all the time or not at all or hangs often, whether it’s fairly robust, easy to use (especially navigating on smaller mobile devices), easy to read, fast enough, and whether it plays nicely with other applications on my device or PC. Of course, whether these characteristics are in scope or out of scope for testing on a particular project needs to be decided but these should at the very least be considered. What else do you think about when testing websites on different end user screens?

 

Posted by Donna Chin

Thank you!

Your details have been submitted and we will be in touch.

Enhance your productivity, sign up to our newsletter

See our Privacy Policy for more details. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Problem submitting!

- {{formError.message}}

Submitting, please wait

/images/newsletter.jpg

Thank you!

Your details have been submitted and we will be in touch.

CHAT