In the martech world, cross-browser testing is… shall we say… deemphasized?
I believe most of our clients are only testing in their own version of Chrome (Mac or Windows, but not both) and if we're lucky, one version of iOS Safari and one of Chrome for Android. (We test in many more ourselves, but we aren't responsible for all the code that goes live.)
Aside from deadlines always being yesterday, the thought process seems to be:
- Firefox is “modern” like Chrome, so their feature sets must be fully converged and it's not worth checking FF (could be either fine or a big mistake, depends on what functions you're calling)
- IE 10 and 11 are ignored because the only worry is CSS styles being slightly off, not problems like broken scripts (a 95% sound assumption, but it's the 5% that matters)
- Safari for Mac is the same as Chrome 'cuz my IT guy said they have the same underlying code (not completely true, there's a 5-10% divergence that can bite you where it counts)
- Edge is ignored because nobody uses it (fair enough, feel bad for Microsoft on this one)
Problem with only testing in a single browser (aside from missing bugs in the first place) is that you fail to point the finger at your own code when something goes wrong.
Imagining your custom forms code must work in IE 10, you blame Marketo's Forms 2.0 library instead.
Thinking mixed content (SSL and non-SSL) warnings can't be due to rules being enforced differently across browsers, you blame Marketo's server infrastructure.
Or, like user JB in this (seriously) fascinating Community question, you're sure you uploaded a valid SSL certificate to Marketo, so you think the site not working in Firefox is a Marketo problem.
But as you can see on the Community thread, what had actually happened was the SSL certificate had been deliberately revoked (so it should not have been expected to work anwhere). Because Chrome uses an outdated way of checking revocation, Chrome happened to not throw an error.
However, once you survey IE, Edge, Firefox, and Chrome (and Safari, which for this purpose uses the same code as Chrome) you see the page didn't work in several modern browsers:
Such a strong split across real-world browsers can help you realize the problem is in your court. While Marketo is certainly not above suspicion, make sure you've done enough testing first!