Websites and web applications today need complex designs with advanced features and functionality, and thus it becomes crucial to perform browser compatibility testing. Today, there are several browser options that users avail as per their preference. With these options, it becomes difficult for developers to develop applications that can run smoothly across all devices, browsers and OS combined. In this article, we will explore advanced cross-browser testing techniques that helps teams to develop flawless web applications, while improving cross-browser reliability and ensuring consistent user experience across various platforms.
What is Cross Browser Testing?
Cross-browser testing helps ensure that a web application or website functions correctly across different browsers, devices, and operating systems. Developers test a website across different screen sizes, OS, and devices to ensure seamless performance for all users, regardless of their choice of platform. By identifying and addressing any inconsistencies that might come through, cross-browser testing helps developers in enhancing the overall user experience of the application. It also sees that the application or website works smoothly on any combination of browser, OS, or device.
Advanced Cross browser Testing Strategies for 2024
Effective cross browser testing is subjected to the right strategies. Some of the key cross browser testing strategies from selecting the right set of devices and browsers to UI frameworks, implementing automation and parallel testing, and more are as follows:
Choose the Right Set of Devices and Browsers
As one of the components of cross browser testing plan, the right choice of devices and browsers to test is an important decision to be made. It is practically impossible to check all the versions of all the browsers available today, and thus the tests should be carried out on browsers with the highest market share; on both: the desktop and mobile versions.
Research should be done to study browser usage statistics and accordingly prioritize browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Samsung Internet and UC Browser for comprehensive testing. Similarly, a variety of mobile device emulators and real devices need to be incorporated to simulate the mobile experience. This targeted approach can help optimize cross-browser compatibility work.
Choose the Best UI Test Frameworks
Automated UI testing frameworks are a must-have for efficient cross browser testing. Choosing the right framework is important based on factors like learning curve, extensibility, supported languages, report generation capabilities and integration with other tools. Popular open-source frameworks like Selenium and Cypress are excellent options that allow writing tests in languages like Java, JavaScript and Python and generate detailed HTML reports.
On the other hand, commercial frameworks like Katalon and Appear.in offer additional advantages like cloud-hosted infrastructure and integration with continuous integration pipelines. A deep evaluation of various frameworks is recommended before selecting the one that best matches project needs.
UI Test Framework for Web Applications
With regards to cross browser testing of web applications, Selenium is known to be one of the most employed open source tool which is capable of testing across both the mobile and the desktop browsers. It has strong features, and supports many programming languages.
Selenium tests can be written to validate both functionality and appearance of web pages across environments. Locating elements, simulating user interactions and extracting responses are all easily achievable.
One can also leverage popular Selenium add-ons like Selenium IDE to generate tests faster without coding. Commercial offerings like Katalon Studio offer the flexibility of desktop and cloud-based execution along with advanced capabilities for data-driven and mobile testing.
UI Test Frameworks for Mobile Applications
For cross-platform mobile applications, frameworks like Appium and Katalon provide unique capabilities to automate tests across physical and emulated devices. Appium is an open source framework that extends the Selenium core functionality to mobile apps. It allows controlling native and hybrid mobile apps using the same WebDriver API. Katalon, on the other hand, packages Appium with additional tools for visual testing, API testing, performance testing and mobile app analytics.
Both of these ensure robust cross-device testing of both Android and iOS applications from a single automation suite. Capabilities like gestures, location tests, taking screenshots and tests for responsiveness and performance make these excellent choices for full-fledged mobile app testing.
Make Use of Automation and Parallel Testing
Leveraging the power of test automation is key to scaling cross-browser compatibility testing efforts. Automated UI tests are more reliable and consistent than manual tests and can be run in parallel across different browsers and operating systems using cloud infrastructure. This allows for the rerunning of the full test suite with each code change, catching any early regressions.
Popular open source test runners like Mocha when used along with frameworks like Selenium and Appium allow running tests simultaneously on real and virtual devices hosted on services like LambdaTest. Such a cloud-based parallel testing approach significantly improves testing coverage and speeds up the feedback cycle, making teams more proficient in cross-browser testing.
Choose a Highly Scalable Testing Platform
With the growing complexity of modern web and app development, a scalable cross-browser testing platform becomes imperative. Open source tools often have limitations in infrastructure when it comes to running large test suites in parallel across different environments. End-to-end commercial platforms with vast device and browser Labs like LambdaTest become a better choice to run thousands of tests with ease, without having to maintain infrastructure.
These offer on-demand access to a wide range of emulators and real devices along with features like video recordings, debugging capabilities, geographic testing and integrations. They are also capable of handling intermittent failures intelligently. Overall, such a scalable platform enables efficient management of the complete application testing lifecycle.
Be Flexible and Allow Customization
While there certainly are advantages to using popular open source testing frameworks, another important aspect is ensuring that the chosen solution is customizable to meet unique business needs. It is common for projects to require modifications to the existing testing infrastructure or integration with non-standard tools. Open source frameworks sometimes make such customization difficult.
Going with an end-to-end platform that allows maximum flexibility in code, configurations and integrations ensures the cross-browser capability can be molded to changing requirements easily. Commercial offerings usually have more customizable options and provide support to address any integration challenges faced. Keeping this flexibility in mind supports future-proofing of the testing approach.
Make Use of AI-powered Testing Tools
AI and machine learning capabilities are finding widespread use even in the domain of cross-browser testing. New tools leveraging computer vision are able to automatically detect visual regressions in web pages and apps across browsers. Companies like Percy offer such a visual testing service to ensure layout, text, images and components render accurately.
Testim employs machine learning to intelligently detect, tag and troubleshoot issues in even unstructured videos of test runs. Bots are better than people in repetitive tasks, and AI-driven solutions allow massively scaling exploratory testing hours. They also offer various smart features like automatic smoke testing of new releases. Going forward, the incorporation of such AI-powered testing tools will unlock new frontiers in cross-browser compatibility.
Meet the Security Requirements of Business
With sensitive customer information involved, security has become a top priority in software development. Cross-browser testing strategies must validate that applications and services meet organizational security standards. Features like authentication, authorization, input sanitization, and sensitive data encryption need rigorous validation across browsers using both positive and negative security test cases. Penetration testing tools can identify vulnerabilities.
Compliance with specific security regulations also needs to be ensured based on the target industry and geographies of deployment. Periodic security testing using both automated and manual techniques tracks any new issues. Adopting a mechanism to manage security test cases as part of cross-browser testing centrally delivers confidence that customer data remains safe.
LambdaTest: Your Reliable Cross-Browser Testing Partner
LambdaTest is a cloud-based platform for cross-browser testing that enables you to test websites and applications across a wide range of browser and operating system combinations. It allows you to perform both manual and automated tests on its extensive browser infrastructure and provides detailed reports quickly.
Some key benefits include easy integrations with all major IDEs and CI/CD tools, on-demand access to latest browser versions, and the ability to test responsiveness across a wide range of screen resolutions and devices. Their unique features like Live Interactive Testing and Visual Regression Testing using AI deliver cutting-edge testing capabilities. Some of the platform capabilities of LambdaTest are as follows:
Testing on 3000+ Real Browsers and Devices
LambdaTest provides access to an extensive range of real browsers and devices. The platform offers over 3000+ real time browsers and devices. These including popular options such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera. Along with it, there are several mobile browsers such as iOS Safari and Chrome for Android.
Live Interactive Testing
LambdaTest offers live interactive testing that lets you interact with your website or web application directly on real browsers or devices while capturing screenshots, and troubleshooting issues in real time.
Visual Regression Testing
The visual regression testing feature in LambdaTest helps identify visual discrepancies in your web application across various browsers and devices. This comes with before-and-after screenshots of your web pages for you to easily detect any unintended visual changes.
Automation Testing Tool
LambdaTest supports automated testing at scale by integrating with popular automation testing tools such as Appium, Cypress, and Espresso, making it easier to run large volumes of tests efficiently.
AI-Powered Test Execution
LambdaTest enhances test execution with its AI-powered tool, HyperExecute, which delivers a faster and more optimized testing environment compared to traditional test execution tools.
Auto Healing Feature
When tests occasionally pass or fail without a clear reason, LambdaTest’s Auto Healing feature steps in. It automatically recovers the test suite from certain failures, reducing the need for manual intervention and improving the efficiency of cross-browser testing.
By incorporating LambdaTest’s wide array of features and extensive browser and device coverage into your testing process, you can ensure that your website or web application performs seamlessly across various browsers, devices, and operating systems.
Conclusion
In this digital era, delivering flawless cross-browser compatibility has become non-negotiable for delivering great customer experience. Following the strategies discussed in this article like prioritizing popular browsers, leveraging powerful automation frameworks, scaling testing on the cloud and leveraging AI can help keep up with the evolving web landscape.
Furthermore, the need to continually assess new techniques and tools to sharpen cross-browser testing approach must also be implemneted. By prioritizing flexibility, security and responsiveness businesses will be well-equipped to face the opportunities and challenges that might come ahead in time. With these considerations and the changing market demands, cross-browser testing is destined to evolve even more in the coming years.
