There's been a lot of interest recently in how to handle quality issues -- content, performance, server capacity, reliability -- for web applications that run on mobile devices.

Combine that with the increasing emphasis on Agile Development Methodologies that help get the application development done quickly and reliably, and you have a double-edged challenge.

We think that the eValid solution can easily fill the gap in both areas, in these ways:

• Device Simulation/Emulation: Using the eValid SetUserAgent command to set the User Agent String (UAS), the browser activity is reported to the server as if it was being requested from the specified device. eValid does this simulation/emulation trick without needing the actual hardware and software! There's a big advantage in having all of the work done from a single testing base.
• Application Content Validation: Once a test script is running well, you'll need to validate that the eValid rendered output matches what you expect in the actual device. Here's a Rendering Comparison for Common Devices Vs. Device Emulator. As you can see -- setting aside pixel density factors -- the rendering by eValid is identical to that for the mobile device.

• Functional/Performance Testing: To illustrate how this works we ran an experiment that applied a simple functional test to 100 Mobile Devices, and recorded the download byte counts and times. The results of some Selected Screenshots show how the server content varies as a function of the device simulated/emulated. Note how much the downloaded byte counts change across devices. The ratio of Download Bytes vs. Download Time illustrates that some servers are not well prepared to deliver mobile content to every kind of device.
• Server Loading: eValid functional tests lift easily to a server loading context, with multiple eValid instances (which we call "Browser Users" or BUs) working in parallel to create high load levels. In a recent experiment we drove a mobile application from a simulated smartphone eith up to 1,000 BUs -- 1,000 simulated mobile device users. The chart of Internal Response Times shows that the server has a response time creep problem above ~225 simultaneous users.
• Mobile Device Monitoring: To see how web pages perform over time, we set up a demo of six monitoring objects. Three represent mobile devices to view three popular e-commerce sites in sequence, and three objects show how the three sites respond to each of the devices.

  The devices used in this demo are a smartphone (an iPhone), a tablet computer (an iPad), and a standard desktop computer (PC). The monitoring interval used is 15 minutes, and web access is a standard 5 Mbps DSL connection. The results are on the eValidator portal, using the account name mobile and the password mobile.

All of which shows that the eValid solution can handle mobile devices in all of the different testing modes described above. Quickly and easily enough to be effective in the Agile Development Methodology context.

• Check out the eValid Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
• If you run into a tricky problem testing a website, you might consider checking out the 40+ entries in our Worked Solutions Resource.
• Watch our revised Annotated/Animated Movies to see how eValid works from the GUI level, and learn how eValid treats specific testing areas. You'll find a wide range of already-worked examples showing how eValid solves typical testing situations.
• For general eValid usage you may wish to check into the set of our "top 99" Power User Tips & Tricks. They cover everything from simple functional testing to detailed LoadTest experiment development.

Business White Paper: Automated Testing of Modern Web Applications

• How Web 2.0 and AJAX make testing more difficult.
• Why assuring quality, reliability, and performance factors in "front end" applications is critical.
• How eValid makes scripting much faster and reduces overall test cycle costs.
• About the market forces that led to the creation of eValid's technology.
• Ways eValid can help non-technical or novice testers in test creation and execution.

To get your copy go here: WhitePaper Download Request.