Do You Test Your Websites Online or Using Real Devices?

[ken_gitahi]

Testing a website for responsiveness, usability, and user experience is important before releasing it to the public. The question becomes, do you test on a real device or online.

Both options have their pros and cons, I am just curious which one you prefer and why.

 

[Nomad]

I build websites on a computer, when the website is ready to be publicly launched I check it on my phone as well as tab. I need to see the responsiveness for real. But sometimes I also check online.

 

[Tyrsson]

It depends greatly on what I am trying to test.

For services I want to first test them at the Unit level ie php unit.

The same services could then be integration tested within the built application.

For load time via different network speeds I would probably test them via something like google pagespeed as seen from a "client's" perspective ie the application caller.

For responsiveness I would first use Firefox Dev Edition and test them via all of the preset breakpoints in the developer tools.

For throughput I would most likely test them via a docker setup and leverage apache bench as a starting point coupled with extensive Xdebug profiling.
- This could in turn lead to extensive benchmarking in phpbench of particular instance method / function benchmarking to find solutions to the bottlenecks identified by apache bench/xdebug profiling.