Are you developing a website for multiple browsers? It will help if you run cross browser testing on it to ensure its seamless operation on various browsers. However, if you are not aware of cross-browser testing, its benefits, and helpful strategies involved with this testing method, this article will guide you efficiently. So, go through all the points mentioned below and broaden your knowledge on cross-browser testing.
What Do You Understand by Cross Browser Testing?
Today, a few lakhs of websites are created every day, thanks to modern technologies. However, not all of these websites can manage to sustain the tough competition of this market. Many websites perish because they face several compatibility issues while running on a specific browser. Moreover, users prefer uninstalling many web applications since they reduce the efficiency of their devices.
Website developers need to emphasize building websites that will run flawlessly on all popular browsers. They should also test their websites thoroughly before launching them to ensure zero error. Therefore, these professionals need to run cross-browser testing on their websites since it is the most effective evaluation method. In cross-browser testing, you can analyze the behavior and functioning of your website on different browsers.
Cross-browser testing helps to understand whether a website is offering the best user experience or not. Besides, it allows testers to assess if the website is working efficiently on all platforms, independent of the browser. This testing method is non-functional, and developers should run it to identify and rectify severe incompatibility issues in a website.
You can apply cross-browser testing techniques to check whether your website gives optimum performance on various browsers and operating systems. This testing method is also useful for analyzing a website on multiple devices such as laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, etc. Besides browsers, operating systems, and devices, cross-browser testing also makes a developer aware of whether his website is compatible with assistive tools. These tools include screen readers for physically-challenged people.
Benefits of Cross Browser Testing
In today’s modern world, people use various browsers, operating systems, and devices. Therefore, website developers have to meet a lot of the demands of users. The competition in the market is very high, and developers cannot risk their website’s reputation under any circumstances. Therefore, they need to come up with the best product that will satisfy users in every way.
Cross-browser websites have always been in high demand among internet users. No one prefers using a web app that does not work correctly on a specific device, OS, or browser. Developing a browser-specific website is old school, and no one opts for it. Developers are more inclined towards creating cross-browser web applications that will have a wider reach.
However, developing a website is not the only task of a website builder. Besides developing robust web applications, these professionals should also focus on testing them thoroughly. It will help them detect the existing errors and rectify them. Therefore, cross-browser testing is the key to success for a website developer. This will ensure that all the features of his product are working efficiently on different browsers.
Often developers and testers debug their website’s source code, thinking it might be enough to make it ready for all platforms. However, things do not work on their way since browser vendors use different interpretations of web standards. They offer HTML, JavaScript, and CSS in a separate form that makes codebase debugging insignificant. Therefore, website developers should evaluate the difference between browsers thoroughly and work on their websites accordingly.
Cross-browser testing acts as a boon for developers since it can detect browser-oriented compatibility issues accurately. Therefore, you can understand the problems and rectify them instantly. Moreover, this testing method will help your website remain accessible to all users accessing different browsers. This will serve the purpose of your web app and increase its popularity amongst the customer base.
Top Five Strategies for Cross Browser Testing
Website developers and testers apply the best techniques to make their cross-browser testing method give the optimum results. However, they miss out on certain things that can ruin the purpose of these tests. Therefore, following a few practical strategies for cross-browser testing can prove highly beneficial for Quality Analysts. They will help these professionals fine-tune a website significantly and release it on time.
Using the correct set of tools and methods can help you achieve 100% results in cross-browser testing. Below are some tried and tested strategies straight from experts. If you follow them, your effort for cross-browser testing will reduce many-fold times. Moreover, these strategies shall make the process faster and more convenient.
1. Pick up the Correct Devices and Browsers
The right set of devices and browsers can be the game-changer for a developer while running the cross-browser testing process. If you can choose the perfect combination of browsers and devices, half of your task will complete. In this step, you will have to use your website’s data usage details to determine your target users' preferences. Moreover, it will help you determine the devices and browsers your potential customers use or love using.
After finding out your customer’s preferences, you will have to modify your browsers and devices list. This will help you meet the expectations of the market. Once you are done listing the most preferred browsers and devices' names, you need to test your product on them. Additionally, it would be best if you also remembered to remove the redundant browsers and devices from your list and adding the latest ones. This will keep you up to date with the current requirements.
2. Select the Topmost User-Interface Testing Tools
Now that you know your customers' browser and device preferences, you need to move ahead to the next step. This step involves selecting the best tools for testing the user-interface of your website. Effective UI testing tools ensure the cross-browser testing process is simpler and faster. Moreover, these tools also help developers create web apps that deliver top-notch performance.
A developer should analyze the requirements of his website and then choose the UI testing tool accordingly. The features and functions of these tools vary from one another. Therefore, understanding the needs of the product will help in selecting the most appropriate testing tool.
Many UI testing tools are available for testing websites and mobile applications. Selenium is the most preferred tool that developers use for assessing the UI of web applications. On the other hand, Appium and Espresso are top tools for testing mobile applications' user interface.
3. Use Both Parallel and Automation Testing Methods
The importance of automation cross-browser testing remains unquestionable. However, parallel testing is also essential since it makes the entire process more efficient. Suppose you have to test five different browsers in which each of them will take 10 minutes to execute. Therefore, you will need 50 minutes (5 * 10) in total to complete all five tests. However, with parallel testing, you can complete the process in just 10 minutes since all the tests will occur simultaneously.
Automation testing makes the process effortless and more productive. Similarly, parallel testing will help you test your website on many browsers and devices simultaneously. Therefore, you can save a lot of time that you can invest in conducting some other tests. The CI pipeline can further ease the entire process through continuous integration. Here the test cycles are faster and more regular, and thus, you can complete your task quickly.
4. Deploy Testing Tools Supporting Artificial Intelligence
Making a web application 100% bug-free is a myth, and no developer can achieve it. However, you can obtain a result that is nearly perfect through AI-based testing tools. These tools can reduce the concentration of errors in your application and make it almost perfect. Most SaaS service providers are switching to advanced technologies such as DevOps and Continuous Integration (CI). These technologies allow professionals to get optimum outputs within a short time.
Artificial Intelligence is an excellent tool for achieving codeless results. Therefore, the application testing team need not spend much time checking the code of your application. Moreover, AI and machine learning are highly beneficial to increase the reliability of the cross-browser tests. This will help testers automate the test cases and reduce human involvement. Therefore, AI-powered testing tools are the future of cross-browser testing.
5. Emphasize the Privacy Needs of Your Business
The web application market covers almost all the domains of the world. Be it the banking sector, automobile industry, or insurance companies; everyone runs a web application for promoting its products and services on a large scale. However, these websites face a lot of privacy breaches which are a massive threat to the business. These breaches include security attacks by skilled hackers. They can attack your website and steal or manipulate confidential data lying on it.
Therefore, web developers should deploy testing tools that can assure the security of a website significantly. They should understand the privacy requirements of the business they are serving and design a product accordingly. Meeting the security standards should be the primary goal of an application developer. Moreover, they should also emphasize creating an application that meets the privacy compliances. This will ensure the product is effective and safe for the business concerned.
Choosing the Correct Platform to Perform Cross-Browser Testing with LambdaTest
Cross-browser-compatible websites can run on various browsers and operating systems. The developers use these websites to increase the reach of the business. However, it is essential to ensure the functionality of the elements in a cross-browser website. There are various tools and platforms available in the market for this purpose. Most of the time, the developers fail to make the perfect choice according to the business requirements.
LambdaTest is a platform to perform automated cross-browser testing on an online Selenium grid. The developers can use this platform to test their cross-browser websites in a Selenium environment safely. Using the Selenium scripts, they can test the website's functionality on thousands of browsers and operating systems. Moreover, the cloud platform allows testers to test their website on remote devices. In simple terms, LambdaTest ensures companies do not alienate any section of the audience base depending on browser incompatibilities. Using LambdaTest, the developers can quickly deliver high-quality web applications to the end-users. This platform also allows the developers to check the variation in UI depending on the device and Browser. LambdaTest offers various attractive plans to support the growth of small start-up companies.
Wrapping Up
Cross-browser testing is essential for creating web applications with top-class functioning. These tests help developers detect all the minor and major bugs present in an application. Therefore, they can rectify the errors and enhance the quality of a website. However, cross-browser testing procedures are far from simple, and they call for applying effective strategies. This article will enlighten you with some of the top strategies for conducting cross-browser testing effectively. We hope you find them helpful while testing your application on various browsers, platforms, and devices.
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