Test your websites to ensure it delivers seamless user experience when rendered through multiple browsers and operating systems.
Cross browser testing is the process of testing your website so that it renders perfectly on various browsers, operating systems, devices, and view ports. It is a crucial step in releasing software and applications that meet the needs and expectations of your users, irrespective of the browser being used by them. You need to ensure cross browser compatibility of your websites when accessed through:
Have you ever thought about what might happen if a user visits your website and discovers that your website is not rendering correctly? Instead, the user would prefer to switch to another website. According to a report by Zendesk, 50% of the customers will switch to a new product if they come across a bad product experience. It means that without rigorous testing, you potentially lose customers as well as their respective conversions.
Any website consists of different components like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript etc., and handling of these components varies significantly from one browser to another. Maintaining uniformity across platforms helps in building an improved end-user experience.
Before rolling out your website, you have to ensure that the site renders correctly on different browsers, browser versions , devices, and operating systems. Cross-browser testing helps achieve enhanced user-experience by identifying cross-browser compatibility errors of your websites and web apps. This helps in debugging the issues at a faster pace. It also helps to ensure that you don't compromise on the end-user experience.
Cross-browser testing effectively nullifies every cross-browser compatibility issue but have you ever wondered how do these issues occur? Well, the answer lies in browser engines. Browser engine is an integral component of the web browser that is responsible for displaying the content of your website. When you click on the URL of any web address, the underlying browser engine will display the web address’s content based on the programming language (e.g. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) used for programming the website. Every web browser has its own way of interpreting the web page which eventually leads to the occurence of cross browser compatibility issues.
These issues arise due to the differences in the rendering process of each browser. To give a mind-blowing experience to your end users, you must specify the number of properties around HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, few of the CSS properties may not be compatible with other browser engines. This is where Cross browser testing comes into the picture as it ensures that your website's and web applications’ cross browser compatibility issues are nullified.
Below are the strategies for making cross browser tests easier and faster:
Read: Effective Strategies for Cross Browser Testing of a Web Application
With the plethora of browsers, devices, and operating systems out there, it is challenging to cover all the major browser and OS versions. It is recommended to limit the research effort to optimize your website's scope within your target audience. You need to analyze the most significant browsers and versions on the following basis:
Based on the above research, select the major browser and OS combinations having high user-traffic. Generally, marketing and Data research plays an essential role in jotting down the most popular browser and operating system, which then helps product and testing teams ease their functional area efforts.
When you have a plethora of devices and browsers available, you need to devise an effective cross-browser testing strategy to perform cross browser compatibility on platforms that matter to you. You need to formalize a browser compatibility matrix based on the target audience, geo-location, and usability trends. A Browser Matrix is a structured list of browsers that ensures that you cover all relevant browsers and reduce the effort involved in development and testing.
To build a browser compatibility matrix, You have to get vital data points comprising platform, desktop browser usage, and mobile browser usage.
On completion, you can build a list of browsers and perform testing on the same.
In general, anyone who develops or designs the web application can test the app. However, the approach can vary from one organization to another. The software testing team or the development team is primarily responsible for performing cross-browser testing. Research analysts and digital marketing experts often play a crucial role by gathering data for usage and traffic for jotting down the most prominent browsers and devices.
The QA team performs cross browser testing to determine the end-user experience. The same test scenarios are tested across multiple platforms and browser combinations to ensure uniformity of functionality. On the other hand, the development team tests the layout and UI features like-images, fonts, alignments, etc., on multiple browsers and make the necessary code changes.
Once you have selected the popular browser-OS combinations, you can initiate your testing process.
Cross browser testing looks like a very smooth process. You must be thinking that you start with the audience, build a browser-matrix, choose an online grid like LambdaTest and then kick start the testing activity. But it is not that easy! There are many issues that the developers face to perform smooth testing. One might say that these issues arise because of a lack of expertise or not following good practice while coding the website. Issues in cross browser testing appear mainly because of not following the standards (either intentionally or unintentionally). If you are working according to the standards, issues might not diminish but will surely come to a shallow margin.
Try to code keeping the following issues at the back of your mind:
There are two approaches:
Manual Cross Browser Testing
Manual Cross Browser testing is also known as live interactive testing, and it is the conventional method used for cross browser testing. Earlier, when the need for cross browser testing arose, people had only one choice: Install each browser in their system. That was when the count of browsers was few and the need for cross browser testing minimal, but now with an increase in browser number, it has become crucial.
In manual testing, browsers have to be installed on different machines against which cross browser testing is performed.This method is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort.
Automated Cross Browser Testing
Manual cross browser testing is not feasible with multiple browsers, OS, and devices on the market today. It is technically challenging to cover such a large combination manually. Therefore, automated cross browser testing is vital for all organizations who want their application to run seamlessly across platform and device combinations. Post that, automation testing tools come into the frame.
Automation tools let you perform automated browser testing in no time. It has been made possible by the cross browser testing tools available today in the market like LambdaTest. These tools allow you to test your website across 3000+ browsers and browser versions without actually installing them.
Apart from Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, there are many different browsers people use to perform their web activities. You need to ensure cross browser compatibility on those browsers for your website and web apps. It makes cross-browser testing a little challenging. Here are the top cross-browser testing challenges faced by software testers:
Login to LambdaTest first, if already have an account else sign up to LambdaTest.
To perform cross browser testing, enter your test URL, select the configurations and then click on Start.
Perform the test on a virtual machine hosted on cloud across multiple browsers and operating systems.
Julien Desrosiers
@hellodesro
devices without having to subscribe to a relatively expensive monthly subscription on browserstack or the likes.
Ben Pritchard
@yesiamben
Super top notch customer support from - just throwing it out there if you're looking for a decent browser testing platform, they get my full double thumbs up. Thumbs upThumbs up
Jette Thrane
@Jette_Thrane
I discovered today... Incredible easy to use. Understandable docs and great support. They called me up from India to ask if I got everything working. Never again will I buy a device, just for testing. Finding this service made my day... no, the whole year!
Matthew Bryson
@mbrysonuk
second-day using and it's already proven itself a lot faster than Cross Browser Testing and BrowserStack, at half the price! bargain