Tech blog

10 Resources to Test your Mobile Web Browser before buying a Tablet

Luigi -

The Tablets are popping up in the stores more and more, they have different CPUs, different resolutions and different Operative Systems, but all of them have a browser. Which is not only an application but the "OS" of all the cloud webapp will use.

So It's very important to test the browser capabilities before encounter a bad experience with a cool websites we were used on the Desktop Computer.

Here some quick interesting tests You could do.

Web Standards Compliance: HTML5 CSS JS

The W3C standards which most people talk about are not finalized yet, anyway many new sites started to taking advantage of their benefits.

  • html5test.com - The results is a general score about how "modern" is your browser. You have to look deeply in tests if the features You care about are supported or not.
  • css3.info - This test is important to check that all the HTML elements will be displayed correctly
  • html5demos.com - A collection of some demos

Performance Tests

The performances are the most critical part in a mobile web browser and unfortunatly there isn't a unique comprehensive test.

  • Google V8 (version 5). It's a Javascript benchmark, which in a few word measure interaction and rendering speed. Latest versions could be not compatible across different browsers.
  • Dromaeo. Javascript benchmarks from Mozilla.
  • Css3 Benchmark, Maze Solver.

Here some results on Android 3.2, iOS iPad2 and Blackberry Playbook.

Extra features

If You want to test some extra but important features in the web browser, here some more tests and demos.

  • HTML5Rocks Slides - Many cool examples embedded in web slides. Accelerometers and this.
  • Multitouch finger detection - (Touch only) Safari mobile supports smoothly upto 11 fingers!
  • CSS Walking Man - CSS Animation, You'll see if css3 animations are accelerated in hardware on not
  • CSS 3D city - CSS Animation
  • Speed Reading. A canvas 2D benchmark from Microsoft. Enable Canvas acceleration on Chrome/ium.  You'll see if canvas 2D animations are accelerated in hardware on not
  • Css3 div box test. Simple css3 rendering test