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During the early years of the internet, people browsed only to access specific sets of information. Thus, the visual aesthetics of the website did not have much value back then. However, things have changed a lot with the advancement of technology. For instance, many companies have started selling various items on the internet. Thus, the websites need to work correctly on every device and operating system. Due to intense competition, none of the companies want to lose their users due to faulty websites. So, it is crucial to perform cross-browser testing on your web application.
Currently, multiple browsers are available in the market, and every browser has numerous versions available. These are the reasons that make cross browser testing an integral part of modern software testing standards. Additionally, the huge amount of browser fragmentation makes cross-browser testing an essential part of software development projects. This article will present a list of the prime cross-browser testing challenges that the testers will face in simple terms.
Importance of Cross Browser Testing
Cross-Browser testing ensures a uniform performance irrespective of the user’s device and browser. For instance, your company will lose a large audience if your website fails to load wholly or partially in specific browsers. Currently, most of the web vendors use Open Browser Standards for website rendering processes. However, the developers must remember that every vendor has a different definition for this rendering process. For instance, every web vendor has a unique way of rendering Java and HTML codes. Thus, even if you rigorously test your web application on a particular browser, it would not ensure the same functioning on other browsers as well. The only way to ensure uniform functioning is to individually test your web application on every browser.
This rendering feature falls under the criteria of abstract web differences. Cross-browser testing helps to sort all these issues and fix all the compatibility errors in a web application. In simple terms, cross-browser testing prevents the development agencies from alienating a particular segment of the users due to browser incompatibility. It is one of the major reasons behind the rapid growth of cross-browser testing. Now let us look at some of the challenges you might face while performing cross-browser testing.
The top Cross-browser testing Challenges for 2021
1. Testing on All Browsers and Platforms
As a developer, you must ensure that the application is accessible to all your users. You have to verify that the web application works smoothly on every operating system, browser, and device. Although it seems to be an easy process, it is far from being easy.
Additionally, you also have to check your application’s functioning on various versions of the same browser. Certain browsers might display different errors according to the operating system of the device. You have to consider all of these possibilities while testing your web application for its responsiveness.
Earlier, the desktop was given higher priority, and the mobile platform was considered an optional add-on. However, those days are long gone, and mobile platforms are equally important as the desktop platform. Furthermore, a recent survey suggests that the Global online traffic of 2020 had 51.65% of mobile devices.
A very wise decision is to add different mobile devices and browsers to the same test pool. Additionally, you have to retest your application after a few weeks due to browser updates. Thus, you’ll end up with the long list of devices, operating systems, and browsers for your test bench. In most cases, the browser of every user will update automatically. This new version of the browsers comes with various bugs and changes. Thus, it is necessary to test your web application to ensure smooth and effective functioning. In simple terms, it is impossible to test these features manually on every single category. So, the easiest solution to this problem is to introduce a cloud-based service for Cross-browser testing.
These services help the developers to increase the reach of the testing environment. For instance, we can test the web application on thousands of mobile and desktop browsers simultaneously. Thus, cloud based testing will provide the perfect infrastructure to serve as a Foundation stone to handle all your cross-browser testing challenges.
2. Effective Testing Methods
It is a harsh reality that every team has neglected its application testing at a certain point in the development process. Moreover, due to the time restrictions in all development projects, manual testing can be a bottleneck for your project development life cycle. A developer needs to perform various tests to ensure the quality of the web application. For instance, you need to perform tests like back and front-end code, code-layout deciphering, UX, and performance analysis, along with cross-browser functionality. However, you have to cut down a specific test to meet the deadline due to various time restrictions. This is a crucial decision as you have to ensure the application’s timely delivery while ensuring your company’s quality.
For a planned website testing process, you have to conduct various lengthy operations, which might slow down your overall delivery process. With proper time management and planning, you can perform multiple testing within the limited time for product development. It is an excellent choice to cut down your overall website testing process. You can use this spare time to develop other crucial features for your website. Moreover, you can add various parts according to the users’ requests to gain a better audience base.
The best solution to manage the time limit of a project is to introduce automation testing. You must understand the areas that you can automate to utilize automation testing’s full potential. Automation Testing conducts all the redundant processes of the testing environment and saves the manual hassle behind it. You can choose Selenium to create Automation Testing scripts for testing the application on various mobile and desktop browsers. Subsequently, you can choose a cloud-based service for automation testing to test your application on different mobile and desktop devices simultaneously. This process also helps you to add more Innovation and creation to your testing environment.
3. Various Automation Testing Cases
As we already discussed, Automation Testing helps you to increase the speed of your web development cycle. However, it isn’t an easy process to introduce test automation in your company. Developing and maintaining proper test scripts isn’t an easy process. Thus, your company will not save money during Automation Testing if you do not have enough people to develop the test scripts. Moreover, you will receive inaccurate results with the test scripts that are not appropriately designed and do not integrate with the testing environment.
These challenges are the primary reasons for which you should evaluate your test needs before introducing automation testing. Additionally, you must perform thorough research on your present testing scenario before planning for the upcoming years. There are various scenarios in a testing environment where Automation Testing is not beneficial. In such cases, you will find various other alternatives that can produce better results.
In the current Software Industry, there are various tools available for performing different tasks of cross-browser testing. For instance, LambdaTest is one of the most popular frameworks for performing automation testing in the Selenium environment. This framework allows you to perform cross-browser testing on your websites and web applications. We will discuss more on LambdaTest in the latter part of this article. It is important to choose the correct tool for Cross-browser testing to utilize your testing environment’s full potential. So, we recommend all the companies conduct thorough research on the testing requirements before choosing.
4. Testing all the Screen Resolutions for Different Types of Visual Bugs
It is evident that manually checking all the visual aspects of a website takes a long time. So, many testers rely on live automation testing to resolve this issue. However, it isn’t a simple process to detect all the visual bugs with life automation testing. In manual testing, the testers have to face a long list of categories that they need to add to the testing environment. These are the areas where people start doubting the efficiency of manual testing.
The best solution is to use tools based on Selenium to perform automated UI testing. For instance, the testers can use LambdaTest to automate the UI testing process efficiently. This wonderful framework allows the testers to take screenshots and compare them to ensure visual aesthetics efficiency. Cloud-based services are also an efficient solution to these problems. These services enable the developers to automatically take a screenshot of the web application on various devices and operating systems. So, the developer musts consider the available resources to find the best solution for testing their UI. This process’s primary goal is to ensure that the end-users can enjoy a consistent performance on every screen resolution.
Latest
As we already discussed, various tools and frameworks are available for performing automated cross-browser testing on web applications. However, you must choose the perfect application to utilize the full potential of your testing environment. We want to recommend all our readers to try out LambdaTest as a useful framework for automated cross-browser testing. The framework allows you to perform automated cross-browser testing for web applications on a scalable and reliable Selenium Grid. Moreover, the developers can use the Selenium scripts to test the web application on thousands of browsers, devices, and operating systems. It ensures that you can create, test, and deliver efficient websites to your end-users.
The Final Verdict
So, we can conclude that the correct tool can help you tackle all your cross-browser testing challenges. All the issues that we discussed in this article may be severe but not unstoppable. As a developer, you must ensure a seamless process for your website development project. Thus, you must analyze all the problems in your testing environment to find the perfect solutions to them. This is because unless you are entirely familiar with the business motive, you cannot improve it. Lastly, we recommend that all the readers check out LambdaTest as the ultimate solution to all automated cross-browser testing needs.
