Now that cross-browser testing is becoming more and more mainstream, it’s common knowledge that the process is necessary for determining a web application’s or website’s compatibility with various browsers. Nothing is more detrimental for a business to let its end users find bugs when a website doesn’t render properly in some browsers.
If a business has a high level of dependency on a website or web application, cross browser testing is all the more important. However, as long as you don’t do it with care and caution, all your efforts can go in vain. Browsers, devices, and operating systems evolve with every passing day. That’s why it’s important to stay updated with relevant information on how to perform cross browser testing the right way for enterprises.
In this post, we are going to take a detailed look at how businesses can make the most out of the cross browser testing efforts if they do everything right. So, are you ready for your website and applications to work without any glitches or discrepancies? Let’s dive right in!
1. Make a Priority List
Make an order-wise priority list of browsers according to popularity and usage. As we all know, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are three of the most popular browsers. Prioritize these three and their browser versions over the less used ones like Internet Explorer. However, make sure not to ignore the rarely used ones. Since they don’t undergo frequent maintenance and upgrades, they might need more attention in some areas.
2. Start Out Early
If you wish to reap the benefits of cross browser testing to the fullest, industry experts recommend starting out in the earliest possible phases of the Software Testing Life Cycle. In other words, don’t miss the bus on this one during the development, design, and QA phases.
However, it’s vital to keep in mind that you can also perform cross browser testing once your website is fully functional. But you should also remember that testing your website in later phases takes the highest costs, more time, and a lot of effort. The worst thing about delaying cross browser testing is the high level of associated risk.
3. Validate The Code
Make sure to determine whether your code is in line with W3C standards. This process known as code validation is extremely crucial. The decline of Internet Explorer is a live example of what happens if a browser doesn’t follow the necessary guidelines. Some text editors have a feature that highlights incompatible code. There are plenty of other validator tools available online to help make your website or web application cross browser compatible.
4. Use Data Sampling
Use data sampling for discovering browsers, browser versions, and operating system configurations with varying screen resolutions. Track user data using tools such as Splunk or Google Analytics once your website goes live. List out the highly used configuration for imparting greater focus on testing after learning about highly used browsers, versions, devices, and OS.
5. Use Virtual Machines and Emulators
It’s next to impossible to test your website or web application on real devices considering there are so many out there in the market. However, you can always use virtual machines and emulators for testing different websites across both new and old browser–operating system combinations. Since virtual machines undergo framing for specific versions of browsers, they turn out to be more authentic for cross browser testing.
Emulators allow testing of web apps with minimal effort and a remarkably low budget. The best part is that plenty of elite cloud-based tools provides emulators featuring different configurations that replicate the website precisely on different browsers and its versions.
6. Automate
Can you imagine performing manual testing on every browser-OS combination when they count to 3000+? This goes without saying, but automation is the future of cross browser testing. In today’s scenario where there are countless browsers, devices, and operating systems out there, covering such a massive combination with the manual approach is next to impossible.
Using automation tools to perform cross browser testing helps save a lot of time. Moreover, it allows the execution of multiple tests at the same time side by side known (parallel testing). One such platform is LambdaTest using which you can also perform real-time testing on devices with varying configurations resolutions, viewports, screen sizes, and so on. A great cloud-based cross browser testing tool provides seamless CI/CD integration along with screenshots, reports, and video recordings of test sessions.
7. Perform Verification of Feature Support
Have you ever felt a mind-boggling discomfort when you realized that a certain feature was no longer working on your webpage? That’s what happens when we don’t bother checking whether a particular feature still works or not. Therefore, if you aspire to build websites that are cross browser compatible, it’s vital to check important features on every single browser you target. For instance, Firefox supports CSS subscripts but Chrome doesn’t. That’s why you should always stay prepared to avoid repeating the same task again and again.
8. Lay Special Emphasis On Smartphones and Tablets
Let’s face it, we live in a mobile-first world. For the past two decades, the world has witnessed a striking growth in the number of mobile users. So much so, that the use of smartphones for browsing the internet is conquering the virtual world. Most leading IT companies prioritize mobile experience for their users. They devote high priority to cross device testing along with cross browser testing.
Companies are launching new mobile devices with varying viewports, screen sizes, and resolutions. This makes setting up an in-house testing infrastructure for synchronizing with these devices extremely impractical. That’s why it’s best to perform automated responsiveness testing for mobile devices using a cloud-based cross browser testing tool. This way, you can just select the desired configuration and start testing your web application or website without any hassles.
Apart from smartphones, tablets are the most popular mobile devices with a wide user base. However, since smartphones dominate the market, testers often overlook tablet compatibility. Before it gets swept under the rug, it’s crucial not to underestimate tablets when we speak of mobile devices. According to Statcounter, they constitute 4% of the internet market share that’s huge!
9. Skip The Not So Necessary Components
Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do in terms of cross browser testing. Before you start cross browser testing, determine whether you have an end goal for your website or web application. The biggest mistake during a Software Testing Life Cycle is to design multiple functionalities together without any vision for the future. This creates a congested landing page full of unnecessary components. This is one of the biggest enemies of any cross browser compatibility testing scenario.
If you end up creating chaos on your landing page, it disturbs the synchronization of various components. All it takes is a single misalignment of a tiny element. In this case, you would have to adjust almost all elements. To make matters worse, it could lead to misalignments of some other elements while you are trying to put the previous ones in line. The process keeps on repeating and the tester gets stuck in a never-ending loop. Therefore, to minimize cross browser compatibility problems, only code the required components.
10. Choose The Correct Cross Browser Testing Tool
A good cross browser testing tool can do wonders for your testing efforts. Choose the one backed by other popular brands of businesses. For higher authenticity, consider a tool that already boasts the trust of plenty of other users. Test automation, geolocation testing, testing of locally hosted web pages, accessibility testing, responsiveness testing, and so on are some of the most crucial factors you should check before opting for a cross browser testing tool.
11. Test, Develop, and Then Test Again
Gone are the days when developers and testing teams used to think they would test only after being completely satisfied with developing various functionalities. Time and again, we have come to realize that this is a highly wrong approach. It’s [pretty obvious that issues keep on piling up if we keep on delaying them.
When you regularly test a website at frequent intervals, collecting user feedback is easy for developers. With continuous feedback, they are able to eliminate issues quickly. Imagine using a deprecated CSS property. Wouldn’t it be better to get notified early rather than having to completely transform the website? The test-develop-test approach makes room for frequent iterations and prevents issues from piling up.
Summing It Up
If a website doesn’t render well on some browsers, that doesn’t mean it’s broken. Most of the time it’s highly possible that it needs proper cross browser testing. If a browser lacks the features your platform is trying to display, it can look like the site is broken on that particular browser. Testers and developers can easily fix this issue with automation testing using a trustworthy cross browser testing tool.
As long as you have the right tool to perform cross browser testing for now nothing can stop you from experiencing flawless rendering of your website on different browsers, browser versions, devices, and operating systems. Speaking of which, LambdaTest provides cloud-based cross browser testing solutions on more than 3,000 real browsers as well as operating systems.
The best part is that you can perform both live interactive and automated cross browser testing and accelerate your time to market. Sounds good? Here’s some more convenience! Users can run JavaScript, Cypress, Appium, and Selenium tests at scale on different devices, browsers, and browser versions. Some other useful features include live testing, mobile app testing, geolocation testing, testing of locally hosted web pages, integrated debugging, seamless collaborations with your favorite tool, and so on.
If you are a first-time user, consider trying it out for free. If it helps, LambdaTest already holds the trust of more than 600,000 users across the globe. The sign-up is free, doesn’t require a credit card, and you can cancel anytime you want if you don’t end up liking it. However, that’s highly unlikely to happen since big brands like Trustpilot, Tech Mahindra, Microsoft, Xerox, and so on have already backed the usefulness of this cloud-based cross browser testing platform. So, what are you waiting for? Ace your testing and make your business reach the pinnacle of success!
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