In the last 10 decades, the world has experienced tremendous growth in the web. The internet users are increasing per day and so has increased the websites. Whether it is the front-end or the back-end of the website both have experienced advancements in terms of technology. As far as browsers are concerned, they are increasing in number and advancing in technology. So when it comes to developing a web application we have to ensure its compatibility with various browsers, operating systems, devices, and their versions. Isn’t this complicated? Here cross-browser testing comes into the picture. So let’s have an overview of cross-browser testing and why it is important for modern web applications.

What is Cross – Browser Testing?

In cross Browser testing, the application under test is tested across a number of browsers and its versions, os and its versions, and multiple devices, to ensure compatibility of the application across all the browsers, os, and devices. Cross-Browser testing is basically done to test whether the UI and the functionalities of the application is consistent among all the devices.
For achieving such efficiency we need to test the application on hundreds of combinations of browsers, operating systems, devices screens, etc. Hence we use automation testing covering various combinations of devices, os, and browsers and also we require to run the same test cases repeatedly hence, automation testing is ideal for cross-browser testing. In manual testing, it is impossible to cover such a large number of test cases and devices for browser testing.

The need for Cross Browser Testing

The device fragmentation issue is the elephant in the room when it comes to application testing. Device fragmentation issues are caused due to the incompatibility between the application’s functionality, UI with the devices, browsers, and the operating systems. The consequences of device fragmentation issues are distorted UI, non-responsive UI, incorrect functionality behavior. The aim is to test the application across a number of os and its versions, devices and its versions and browsers and its versions which is equal to running hundreds of test cases on multiple devices, browsers, and os. Here cross-browser testing comes into the picture. In cross-browser testing, we run multiple test cases across the various combinations of devices, browsers, and os.

UI distortion, non-responsive websites, and functionally misbehaving websites or applications are all the consequences of not performing cross-browser testing. That’s the reason cross-browser testing is the most crucial step to cover for developing high-performance mobile applications.

Best practices for Cross-browser testing

Implementing the test automation tools

Tools like Selenium grid enable parallel testing where one server is connected to many nodes to distribute the test cases among many devices and browsers. The most popular cross-browser testing tools are selenium grid 1.0 and 2.0. Also, the selenium grid 4.0 has some advanced features for cross-browser testing. Selenium web driver and Appium are also excellent tools that can be used for cross-browser testing.

Using cloud-based platforms

Using cloud-based platforms like pCloudy is the best option for cross-browser testing as it eliminates the complexity and heavy costs required in physical labs. Cloud-based tools perfectly support parallel testing and also avoids all the complexities associated with parallel testing. Cloud-based platforms are highly scalable hence we can add or remove the number of devices required for a specific platform. Also, cloud-based tools are highly accessible which can be used from anywhere and anytime. This is ideal for teams working remotely

Conclusion

With digitization advancing at supersonic speed, web and mobile applications have also transformed into better versions and to make sure that they are high performing we need to invest our time, energy in application testing. Achieving compatibility among the devices, os, and browsers is the greatest bottleneck in application testing hence cross-browser testing is crucial! Cross-browser testing ensures seamless functioning and a perfect user experience. These properties are very important to increase user engagement in the website. Hence all these factors bet for the importance of using cross-browser testing.