I recently received a testing task where I was asked to check the performance of a web application. As a manual tester, I don’t always have access to advanced automation frameworks or specialized performance tools, but modern browsers provide powerful built‑in features that can be used effectively. For this task, I relied on the Inspect tool (Developer Tools) in Chrome, which allowed me to observe how the application behaved under different conditions, measure load times, and identify potential bottlenecks. This approach gave me practical insights without requiring additional software, making it a valuable method for quick performance checks during manual testing.
Purpose
The main purpose of using Inspect for performance testing is to gain visibility into how a web application loads and responds. It helps testers monitor network requests, resource sizes, and rendering speed directly from the browser. By analyzing these details, we can identify issues such as slow page loads, heavy scripts, or failed requests. This makes Inspect a simple yet effective tool for validating performance during manual QA tasks, especially when the goal is to provide developers with actionable feedback in a short time frame.
Steps
- Open Inspect
- Launch the application in Chrome.
- Right‑click on the page and select Inspect (or press
Ctrl+Shift+I).
- Go to Network Tab
- Switch to the Network tab.
- Clear logs before starting.
- Reload the Page
- Press F5 to reload.
- Observe how long the page takes to load.
- Check Metrics
- Page load time.
- Waterfall view for request sequence.
- Resource sizes.
- Errors or failed requests.
- Use Performance Tab (Optional)
- Record performance while interacting with the page.
- Review CPU usage and rendering speed.
- Document Findings
- Note response times, heavy resources, and failed requests.
- Suggest optimizations (e.g., compressing images, reducing script size).
Result
Using Inspect, I was able to provide a clear performance snapshot with:
- Load time benchmarks
- Resource bottlenecks
- Suggestions for improvement