The journey of modern app development requires more than just code expertise. Its fundamental demands are a critical approach that places cross-browser compatibility and testing at its center.
Even when building a web, building it up for the developer itself is easy but keeping the diverse requirements of the user in mind and focusing on them is a crucial process.
QA’s and developers from various organizations make regular efforts to keep cross-browser testing up to the mark but defining a strategy helps the developer in avoiding bottlenecks that obstruct the application’s timely release.
In this article, we will discuss cross-browser testing, its benefits, the compatibility tools used, strategies for advanced testing, and some of its best practices.
What is cross-browser compatibility testing?
In general, browser compatibility testing is all about making sure that the developer delivers the website to the users with a compatible and fine experience regardless of the browser they choose.
Every website interprets code differently because of its different rendering engines. To make the website look and work the same regardless of the user’s browser using browser compatibility is one of the finest decisions. It ensures that the website looks and functions the same even if the user is using it on Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, etc
Benefits of cross-browser testing
There are millions of websites available today, but only a few of them are active. The reason being that is compatibility issues cause failure in the working of almost 90% of websites. This shows the importance of cross-browser testing for developing a completely working web. Some benefits of cross-browser testing are listed below:
- Cross-browser testing provides a broader reach for the developer’s website. It makes sure that the website is accessible to more users regardless of the browser they use.
- It gives the developer’s website a uniform look even if it runs on Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, etc.
- Cross-browser testing makes the developer’s website more user-friendly and ensures a higher ranking of the website.
- Cross-browser testing makes sure that the website runs flawlessly on any browser, regardless of the browser they use. This makes sure that the user does not miss anything if they are using any other browser.
The most common cross-browser compatibility issues and their solutions
Hundreds of technologies like Python, Ruby, etc work on the back end of websites. However, three significant languages that are present in any website are Java, CSS, and HTML. These languages are the reason why every render engine renders a website diversely.
There are some issues the developer can take care of while making websites:
- The usage of validators and linters while writing codes helps the developer make out common issues like syntax errors or bad code practices.
- The use of the W3S Markup Validation Service helps to verify the HTML codes and the use of the W3S CSS validation service helps in the CSS validation
- Use the browser developer tools to find errors in the written script. The error found in the developer tools could be a significant reason behind cross-browser incompatibility because the element may not be valid for the browser.
- While using third-party code, discover that the HTML produced by the third-party app has a class ID or name the same as the developer is using in their code for a different reason. Since there won’t be any errors this can become a serious issue to troubleshoot because the different ways in which different browsers render HTML will lead to problems.
Strategies for advanced cross-browser testing
There are several strategies for cross-browser testing. Mentioned below are some top-notch strategies for advanced cross-browser testing:
Make use of manual testing
Manual testing requires the developers to manually test the website on distinguished devices and browsers to recognize any kind of error. Although this process provides thorough testing, it can miss some issues on websites that are not commonly used and consume a lot of time.
Use automated testing
To automate the testing process, automated testing involves the use of scripts and testing frameworks. Popular automation tools like Selenium allow the developer to write scripts in different programming languages to activate user interactions and check issues in different browsers.
Follow web standards
Web standards are instructions developed by the World Wide Web and other organizations. They are designed to make sure that the website works well across various platforms and devices and they also define how web technologies should work. These standards ensure that the code is more likely to be interpreted continuously across browsers.
Use feature detection
All browsers do not support all the web features. The use of feature detection is that it checks if a browser supports a certain feature before using it. This helps in avoiding errors in browsers that do not support the features and it also provides substitute functionality or styling for those browsers.
Choose the right set of browsers and devices
Choosing the right set of browsers for cross-browsing testing is a crucial task. It is like a significant milestone in the process. A major component of executing the process is using the product’s usage data to decide which browsers and devices the customers would prefer.
Choose the best UI test framework
Once the footing of the right set of browsers and devices is done selecting a good UI testing framework is the next baluster. To make the whole browsing testing uncomplicated and flawless to develop a towering performance application, choosing the best UI framework is one of the finest techniques.
Choose a highly scalable testing platform
Having a mobile device lab that easily adds and removes the devices as per the requirement of the project helps the developer achieve cross-browser compatibility which can be attained only when dynamic market necessities are addressed.
The fusion of operating systems and their versions, browsers and their versions, and devices and their versions is exceedingly unknown. Therefore, the device lab that the developer is using should be highly scalable so that the device without influencing the other functionality of the device lab can be added or removed.
Make use of AI-powered testing tools
Removing errors and bugs from a software application is a difficult task but to achieve high-quality results the user can surely dilute the concentration.
To achieve quicker and more quantitative results almost all SaaS organizations are making efforts to use exclusive technologies like continuous integration and DevOps. However, the use of AI can help to speed up the process by providing codeless solutions.
Use a cloud-based testing framework
Cloud-based testing platforms like LambdaTest provide the developer with a broad array of remotely accessible devices and real browsers. With the help of such a framework, developers can execute tests on different operating systems and browsers.
Make use of automation and parallel testing
To improve test execution time for cross-browser testing automating LambdaTest is a must. However, executing parallel testing is what makes cross-browser testing productive and complete.
Parallel testing allows the developer to perform tests for multiple devices and browsers in the shortest period while LambdaTest allows to run tests in different environments at once. The fusion of these two aspects for testing takes cross-browser at an ideal level. To streamline the flow further the developer can make use of the CI/CD pipeline which uses an uninterrupted combination. This makes the test cycles run much earlier.
Be flexible and allow customization
Surviving an extremely dynamic market like the application industry requires the framework to always be service-ready. It means that it should have such hardware and software integration that is flexible enough to allow customization at any time.
The application industry is a market that is directly imposed on the user base where the demands of the user keep changing. So the developer should make sure that the product is flexible enough to adapt to the future requirements of the customers and provide quality products on time.
In the end, to achieve cross-browser compatibility the developer needs to stick with best practices and guidelines. Responsive design is very important for providing a compatible user experience across various devices. It makes sure that the websites adjust to different resolutions and screen sizes.
Regardless of the browser capabilities, graceful degradation and progressive enhancements are two strategies that focus on providing every user with a functional experience. On the other side, progressive enhancement enhances the basic version of the website with its modern and advanced version.
To keep up with evolving browsers and technologies, regular updating and testing are some important practices. Testing the website regularly on the latest versions of the browser and addressing issues promptly ensure an impeccable experience for the user. By keeping these in mind, mentioned below are some most important and useful cross-browser testing compatibility tools that will surely help the developers.
Cross-browser testing compatibility tools
After the developer gets familiar with cross-browser testing they will need to gain access to cross-browser testing platforms available to them. Some of the best cross-browser testing platforms available are LambdaTest, Selenium, Cypress, etc.
LambdaTest: Lambdatest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that is used for testing web and mobile applications both manually and automated. This platform allows testers to perform both real-time and automation testing by providing access to more than 3000 environments, real mobile devices, and browsers online.
It is a cloud-based cross-browser testing platform that offers instant access to numerous browser versions and platforms. It also allows users to conduct cross-browser compatibility testing to ensure that the website renders the same across all browsers. Along with this, it provides integrated debugging and testing features. Additionally to increase the efficiency of the application delivery and test cycles users can simultaneously perform parallel testing using the LambdaTest platform.
Selenium: Selenium provides developers with tests on multiple browsers at a time. Parallel testing, built-in-grid capability, and testing across browsers through various web drivers are also present in Selenium.
Cypress: Cypress is a JavaScript-based testing framework. It provides an automation solution used for modern web automation. Cypress allows the team to create a web test automation script and enables the test-automated engineers and fronted developers to use JavaScript to write web tests.
Conclusion
In this constantly evolving digital and updating world, cross-browser testing is a very important process required to develop high-performance applications, but it is complicated at the same time because it has to deal with various combinations of browsers, devices, and operating systems. However, with proper strategies and planning the developer can make the process much faster, easier, uncomplicated, and qualitative.
The planning for cross-browser testing starts with re-evaluating the list of browsers, operating systems, devices, etc, and repeating the drill at regular intervals.
This article mentioned an overview of cross-browser compatibility its benefits, strategies, and best practices for effective execution. Hope this article provides all the essential requirements to achieve cross-browser compatibility.