Every term a website QA professional needs to know. Clear definitions, practical context, and links to deeper resources.
A/B Testing
A method of comparing two or more versions of a webpage or feature by randomly assigning visitors to...
Acceptance Criteria
A set of predefined conditions that a feature or user story must satisfy to be accepted as complete ...
Accessibility Testing
Testing that evaluates whether a website or application can be used by people with disabilities, inc...
Accessible Rich Internet Applications
A set of HTML attributes defined by the W3C that add semantic meaning to web elements, enabling assi...
ADA Compliance
Conformance with the Americans with Disabilities Act as it applies to websites, generally interprete...
Blue-Green Deployment
A deployment strategy that maintains two identical production environments (blue and green), where o...
Bug Triage
The process of reviewing, categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning reported defects to ensure that ...
Canary Deployment
A deployment strategy that routes a small percentage of production traffic to the new version while ...
Content Security Policy
An HTTP security header that controls which resources (scripts, styles, images, fonts, etc.) a brows...
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment
A software development practice where code changes are automatically built, tested, and deployed thr...
Continuous Testing
The practice of running automated tests at every stage of the software delivery pipeline, providing ...
Cookie Consent
A mechanism that informs website visitors about the use of cookies and tracking technologies and col...
Core Web Vitals
A set of three specific metrics defined by Google that measure real-world user experience for page l...
Cross-Browser Testing
Testing that verifies a website or web application renders and functions correctly across different ...
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing
A browser security mechanism that controls how web pages from one origin (domain) can request resour...
Cumulative Layout Shift
A Core Web Vital metric that measures the total of all unexpected layout shifts that occur during a ...
Data Subject Access Request
A formal request made by an individual exercising their legal right to obtain a copy of all personal...
Defect
A flaw in a software product where the actual behavior deviates from the expected behavior defined b...
Definition of Done
A shared checklist of criteria that every work item must satisfy before it can be considered complet...
End-to-End Testing
Testing that validates an entire application workflow from start to finish, simulating real user beh...
European Accessibility Act
An EU directive that requires products and services, including websites and mobile applications, sol...
Exploratory Testing
An unscripted testing approach where testers simultaneously learn about the application, design test...
Feature Flag
A configuration mechanism that allows teams to enable or disable features in production without depl...
Flaky Test
An automated test that produces inconsistent results, sometimes passing and sometimes failing on the...
Integration Testing
Testing that verifies two or more components or services work correctly when combined, focusing on t...
Interaction to Next Paint
A Core Web Vital metric that measures the responsiveness of a page by tracking the latency of all us...
Largest Contentful Paint
A Core Web Vital metric that measures the time from when a page starts loading to when the largest v...
Load Testing
Testing that evaluates how a system performs under expected and peak traffic conditions by simulatin...
Penetration Testing
A security testing method where authorized testers simulate real-world attacks against a system to i...
Progressive Enhancement
A web development strategy that starts with a baseline of functional HTML content accessible to all ...
Regression Testing
Testing that verifies previously working functionality still works correctly after code changes, bug...
Responsive Design
A web design approach that makes pages render correctly across a wide range of screen sizes and devi...
Rollback
The process of reverting a production deployment to a previous known-good version when a release int...
Sanity Testing
A focused, narrow round of testing that verifies a specific bug fix or feature change works as expec...
Severity vs Priority
Severity describes the technical impact of a defect on the system, while priority indicates the urge...
Shift-Left Testing
A testing strategy that moves testing activities earlier in the software development lifecycle, catc...
Smoke Testing
A quick, high-level round of testing that checks whether the most critical functions of an applicati...
Sprint
A fixed-length iteration (typically one to four weeks) in Scrum methodology during which a team comm...
Staging Environment
A pre-production environment that mirrors the production setup as closely as possible, used for fina...
Test Automation
The use of software tools and scripts to execute tests, compare results against expected outcomes, a...
Test Case
A documented set of conditions, inputs, actions, and expected results that a tester follows to verif...
Test Coverage
A measure of how much of an application's code, features, or requirements are exercised by the test ...
Test Environment
A configured setup of hardware, software, network settings, and data that replicates the conditions ...
Test Plan
A document that outlines the scope, objectives, approach, schedule, resources, and deliverables for ...
Test Suite
A collection of related test cases grouped together to test a specific feature, module, or aspect of...
Unit Testing
Testing that verifies individual functions, methods, or components work correctly in isolation from ...
Usability Testing
Testing that evaluates how easy and intuitive a product is to use by observing real users as they at...
User Acceptance Testing
The final phase of software testing where real users or stakeholders verify that a system meets thei...
Version Control
A system that records changes to files over time so that specific versions can be recalled later, en...
Visual Regression Testing
Testing that detects unintended visual changes in a user interface by comparing screenshots of the c...