These days staying updated with evolving features is important as it ensures that web applications work excellently. Web developers must often know that their code will only run on some websites. They are unsure about their code working on all other browsers they don’t have in their system. This is where cross-browser testing comes into action. Cross-browser testing is a critical part of web development. It ensures application functions correctly and looks consistent across different devices and browsers.
Getting started with cross-browser testing is about ensuring that web applications function correctly across different devices and browsers. It is important as it provides a seamless user experience. This article discusses cross-browser testing, benefits, practical tips, and resources.
Cross-browser testing is a type of software testing. It helps testers check the compatibility of their web application across different platforms, browsers, and versions. It ensures that the web application appears consistently and correctly across various browsers.
Sometimes, due to different rendering engines, the code leads to discrepancies in its look and behavior, creating problems for users who access the site using various browsers.
Despite millions of websites being available today only a few are active. The reason is that its compatibility issues cause failure in the working of almost 90% of websites. This shows how important cross-browser testing is for developing a completely working web. Some benefits of cross-browser testing are listed below:
Cross-browser testing provides a wide reach for the developer’s website. It makes sure that the website is accessible to most users irrespective of the browser they use.
It gives the developer’s website a uniform look even if it runs on Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, etc.
Cross-browser testing makes the developer’s website more user-friendly and ensures the website’s higher ranking.
Cross-browser testing ensures that the website runs flawlessly on any browser, regardless of the browser they use. This guarantees that the user does not miss anything while using any other browser.
By ensuring compatibility across various browsers, testers can reach a larger audience, including those with older or less common browsers.
It detects and resolves issues early in the development process. This leads to a robust and reliable application.
Early detection of cross-browser minimizes the cost and effort required for future bug fixes and maintenance.
It ensures that the application adheres to web standards and best practices.
Some practical tips for cross-browser testing are mentioned below:
Manual testing requires the developers to manually test the website on distinguished devices and browsers to recognize errors. Although this process provides thorough testing, it can leave some issues on websites that are not commonly used and consume a lot of time.
Automated testing automates the testing process. It involves the use of scripts and testing frameworks. Popular automation frameworks like Selenium allow developers to write scripts in different programming languages to activate user interactions and check issues in various web browsers online.
Web standards are instructions developed by the World Wide Web and other organizations. They are designed to ensure that websites work well across various platforms and devices. They also define how web technologies should work. These standards ensure that code is more likely to be interpreted continuously.
Every browser does not support all the web features. To overcome this problem testers can use feature detection. Feature detection checks if a browser supports a certain feature. This helps avoid errors in browsers that do not support the features and also provides substitute functionality or styling for those browsers.
Choosing the right set of browsers for cross-browsing testing is a crucial task. It is like a milestone in the process. A major component of executing the process is using the product’s usage data to decide which browsers and devices the customers prefer.
Once the right set of browsers and devices is chosen, selecting a good UI testing framework is the next baluster. Choosing the best UI framework is one of the finest techniques. Selecting the best UI framework is one of the finest techniques to make browsing testing uncomplicated and flawless. It also helps to develop a towering performance application.
Having a mobile device lab that easily adds and removes the devices as per the projects’ requirements is helpful for developers. It helps them achieve cross-browser compatibility which can be attained only when dynamic market necessities are addressed.
The fusion of operating systems and their versions, browsers and their versions, and devices and their versions is exceedingly unknown. Therefore, the device lab that the developer is using should be highly scalable so that the device without influencing the other functionality of the lab can be added or removed.
Removing errors and bugs from a software application is a difficult task. Although to achieve high-quality results the user can surely dilute the concentration.
To achieve quicker and more quantitative results almost all SaaS organizations are making efforts to use exclusive technologies like continuous integration and DevOps. However, AI can speed up the process by providing codeless solutions.
AI-powered test orchestration and execution platforms like LambdaTest provide developers with remotely accessible devices and real browsers. With the help of such a framework, developers can execute tests on different operating systems and browsers.
Automating LambdaTest is a must to improve test execution time for cross-browser testing. However, executing parallel testing is what makes cross-browser testing productive and complete.
Parallel testing allows testers to perform tests for multiple devices and browsers in the shortest period. These two aspects of testing take cross-browser at an ideal level. To streamline the flow further the developer can use the CI/CD pipeline which uses an uninterrupted combination. This makes the test cycles run much earlier.
Surviving an extremely dynamic market like the application industry requires the framework to be service-ready. It should have hardware and software integration that is flexible enough to allow customization at any time.
The application industry is directly imposed on the user base where the user's demands keep changing. So the developer should ensure that the application is flexible enough to adapt to the customers’ future requirements and provide quality materials on time.
To achieve cross-browser compatibility the developers should stick with best practices and guidelines. Responsive design is also important for providing a compatible user experience across various devices. It ensures that the websites adjust to different resolutions and screen sizes.
Regardless of the browser capabilities, graceful degradation and progressive enhancements are two strategies that focus on providing every user with a functional experience. On the other side, progressive enhancement enhances the basic version of the website with its modern and advanced version.
Regular updating and testing are important to keep up with evolving browsers and technologies. Testing the website regularly on the latest browser versions and addressing issues helps to ensure an impeccable user experience.
Cross-browser testing helps to test web projects efficiently. Given below are some popular resources, tools, and frameworks for efficient browser testing:
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform. It is for running manual and automated testing at scale. The platform allows users to perform both real-time and automation testing across more than 3000 environments and real mobile devices.
It supports cross-browser testing across many browsers, ensuring that web applications are compatible and function seamlessly on different browser versions. This is critical for delivering a consistent user experience to a diverse user base.
In summary, LambdaTest combines AI-driven orchestration and stands out as a powerful and versatile testing platform. It supports manual as well as automated testing and a vast array of testing environments. This makes it extremely useful for teams and organizations looking to enhance their testing processes and ensure the robustness and reliability of their applications across different scenarios.
It is a cloud-based testing platform. It offers a wide range of browsers and devices for cross-browser testing. It provides automated testing, various frameworks, and live interactive testing.
Ghostlab is a paid tool that provides synchronized testing and debugging across multiple browsers. It helps you to inspect real-time issues.
Blisk is a specifically designed browser for web development and testing. Blisk makes it easier to spot compatibility during development. It provides a side-by-side view of your website on multiple browsers and devices.
Browsershot is a tool useful for visual comparisons. It is an open-source tool that provides screenshots as they appear in different browsers and versions.
Browserling is a web-based tool and it offers real-time browser access. It is suitable for quick checks and debugging. Testers can quickly test their websites on various browsers without downloads or installation.
Some modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge have built-in developer tools. Inspecting, debugging, and testing websites are essential aspects of this tool. Emulating different browsers and network conditions are some features offered by this.
Jest is a JavaScript testing framework. It focuses on simplicity, works well with React applications, and supports cross-browser testing. It is designed to be easy to set up and use out of the box. Jest runs tests in parallel. It optimizes test execution time by running multiple tests concurrently.
It also includes built-in support for mocking functions and modules. This allows developers to create mock implementations and simulate behavior during tests.
Mocha is a JavaScript test framework. It is flexible and feature-rich and can be integrated with other libraries and tools for cross-browser testing. It is widely used for both integration and unit testing. Mocha also supports various testing styles like BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) and TDD (Test-Driven Development).
It offers multiple built-in reporters and supports custom reports. It allows developers to generate test reports in different formats. It is extensible through plugins and customs reporters.
Karma is a test runner that allows testers to run tests on real browsers. It permits testers to execute tests across multiple browsers. It integrates seamlessly with various JavaScript testing frameworks like Jasmine or Mocha. It is designed to work well with CI systems like Jenkins, Travis CI, and others. It can be configured to run tests automatically whenever code changes are pushed. It offers a highly customizable configuration file.
Effective browser testing is important to ensure a consistent and seamless user experience. Adopting the practical tips and resources mentioned above can help testers streamline and enhance their cross-browser testing efforts. The tips and resources allow testers to identify and resolve compatibility issues. Hope this article helps you with the knowledge of tips and resources for cross-browser testing.