A single page web app like OpenGeoPortal contains thousands of lines of application code and many large JavaScript libraries. Testing on all the popular browsers is difficult. It requires VMs or multiple machines to run specific browsers (e.g., IE and Safari). Running specific, old versions of browsers is a problem as they automatically and frequently update themselves. Since I run on OS X, I can’t locally run Microsoft’s Edge or various versions of IE so compatibility testing used to be difficult. With BrowserStack, you can run any browser within your browser. It starts a VM running whatever operating system and browser. They connect with your browser via a plugin. In only 20 seconds I started a VM with Windows 10 and Edge for OGP compatibility testing. BrowserStack is useful when you need specific versions to test with: Firefox version 35 on OS X, Chrome on Windows 8.1, etc. It isn’t free but they do provide free accounts to developers on open source projects and students.
