Ringmark mobile browser test suite open sourced

Ringmark in the Chrome Beta for Android Facebook Engineer Matt Kelly has announced that the Ringmark mobile browser test suite is now available as open source. First introduced in late February, Ringmark was created by Facebook and Bocoup to help developers discover which browsers for mobile devices support the functionality required by their apps.

Each of the tests in the suite are based on a set of specifications that are arranged into "rings" of features. As the rings get larger they contain more features and more challenging tests for those features. The rings can also be used to express a level of compliance and capability of a device's browser. "For example, when a developer hears of a new device running a Ring 1 browser, they'll immediately understand that 2D games, audio, video, and camera apps can be built on that device" says Kelly.

Ringmark currently has three rings and, should any of the tests in a ring fail, the tests in following ring will not be run. Over time, the developers plan to add more tests and rings. The developers will contribute the Ringmark tests to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) recently announced Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group "very soon". Those interested in contributing to the project and the specifications are asked to join the Group's mailing lists.

More details about Ringmark, including why the team decided to create it, can be found in Kelly's announcement blog post. Source code for Ringmark is hosted at github.com/coremob, while the source for the individual tests are available from github.com/facebook/coremob-tests – both are dual-licensed under the W3C Test Suite license and the 3-clause BSD license.

See also:

• The Methodology Behind Ringmark, a Facebook HTML5 blog post.

(crve)