To me, the most important metric to me is the browser - platform matrix. Since I consider the QA Engineer's primary goal is to operate a web application exactly as the customer base to see everything as they see it, I want to know what browsers and platforms are being used.

Google Analytics showed me that from Saturday, October 21st to Friday, October 27th there were 1,176 user sessions. A "session", according to Google, is "the period of time a user is actively engaged in your website, app, etc".

With these user sessions, the top ten browsers used were:

Browser Stats: Top 10 Browsers

This astonished me.

I keep on thinking that maybe this week MS Edge usage will grow over time. But, no. It always seems to be Chrome & Firefox which are the top two. They seem to make up 87% of all readers of this blog.

As a software tester, I usually test in:

• Chrome, though I probably won't find many bugs using that browser since that seems to be most developer's favorite browser at the companies I have worked for.
• Firefox, a few bugs may creep in, since fewer developers use that.
• Internet Explorer 11, 10, and 9, depending on what the Product Owner wants. Working with healthcare companies or financial firms, you will see some old, old browsers
• Safari on the Mac

... I never get a chance to test on MS Edge, usually running out of time. I then get worried, checking the browser stats for the application I am testing on... and I find that it is always around two percent of the population.

What ever happened to Microsoft's edge?


Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"