X-Diag: Automated Debugging Cross-Browser Issues in Web Applications

With the advent of Web 2.0 application, and the increasing number of browsers and platforms on which the applications can be executed, cross-browser incompatibilities (XBIs) are becoming a serious problem for organizations to develop web-based software. Although many techniques and tools have been proposed to detect cross-browser issues, there still lacks a comprehensive approach to locate the root causes of various cross-browser issues. To address this limitation, this paper proposes X-Diag, an automated technique for debugging XBIs based on our findings from an extensive study of the root causes of XBIs in real-world applications. The characteristic of X-Diag is that it narrows down the root causes of cross-browser issues step-by-step by checking whether such issues are caused by incompatible DOM APIs, CSS properties or Html elements. Our empirical evaluation shows that X-Diag is effective in locating the root causes of cross-browser issues, and can provide useful support to developers for (eventually) eliminate XBIs.