Cross browser testing entails assessing your website’s functionality and aesthetics on different browsers. This way, you can identify where poorly configured browsers are causing issues and fix them.
This article explores what cross-browser testing is and why it’s important to avoid bad user experiences.
What is Cross Browser Testing?
Cross-browser testing means checking and validating a site works the same way in all web browsers, for all end users. It makes sure a site works uniformly and reliably on all browsers.
What to Test in Cross Browser Testing
1. Functionality
Functionality tests ensure that all the form fields and buttons, links, tabs, and navigation on your site work correctly on different browsers.
Every browser has a slightly different interpretation of what HTML or CSS means and will sometimes render HTML elements differently and interpret CSS rules uniquely.
2. Design and Layout
Ensure the website appearance – fonts, images, colors, and layout – works as expected across all browsers.
Various browsers deal with CSS and HTML in slightly different ways. That said, a website design might appear different across browsers.
3. Performance
Regardless of the server, some browsers handle URL requests and load speeds differently than others. So you must evaluate how quickly a website loads and performs on different browsers.
4. Interoperability
This involves ensuring that websites work with all browsers, as well as with different versions of the browsers, across operating systems and devices, such as desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Why is Cross Browser Testing Important?
Cross browser testing is valuable in the following ways:
1. Deliver Consistent User Experience
Cross browser testing helps you make sure that your website or application looks and behaves the same, no matter what web browser or device your visitors might be using.,
Your customers will have a good experience with your website if it is compatible with their preferred browser.
2. Improve Accessibility
Testing across browsers helps uncover compatibility issues for users with disabilities who might use a specific assistive technology or browser settings. Cross-platform accessibility enhances usability for all users.
3. Ensure Functionality
Cross browser testing checks that your site works as planned across popular web browsers. It also ensures your website is free from bugs or technical issues before the official launch.
About 60 percent of online customers abandon their online purchases because of poor web design, broken links, or hard-to-navigate pages. But this situation is avoidable.
4. Maintain Brand Reputation
Having a consistent and working website across all browsers sends a positive message about your brand.
If users come across bugs on a browser, they may feel your brand is unreliable or out of touch. Hence, it’s essential to test your website extensively to maintain a professional look.
5. Boost SEO
Google keeps an eye out for user experience as a ranking factor. A well-tested website that renders properly across all main browsers and offers a good experience is hence likely to have a lower bounce rate, which is great for SEO.
How to Perform Cross Browser Testing?
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you conduct effective cross browser testing:
1. Establish A Baseline
First, establish a benchmark by defining what’s working on your site now. Think of your most frequently used or customized features. Make a list of the browser versions your site is currently rendering on.
Document baseline performance metrics such as load times, responsiveness, and visual appearance because you will refer back to these metrics throughout the testing process.
2. Create A Testing Plan
The next step is to talk with your client about what should be tested. Chances are, it will be what your user analytics tells you.
Then, match your client’s feedback to your analytics and determine the exact browsers and their versions that should be in your testing matrix.
Also, collect some actual client data, even if only sample data for testing purposes.
Some website QA testing tools like QA.tech have live data entries, where you can enter actual user data to test the site. This will allow you to test it in real conditions and find bugs.
3. Choose Testing Techniques and Tools
Choosing the right testing techniques and tools for cross-browser testing depends on the type of tests being conducted.
Fortunately, there is a time and a place for both types of techniques – manual and automated testing.
Manual testing is excellent for exploratory testing, inspection-based testing, and situations where human judgment and decision-making skills matter more than an automated rig.
Automated testing is great for repeatable cases, such as running scripted tests against thousands of records. It’s also helpful for regression testing to check for problems after adjusting a feature.
Since automated cross browser testing tools follow a predefined set of actions they can complete tasks much faster than humans could.
4. Set up the Infrastructure
Having the correct infrastructure in place is also important in free cross browser testing.
You’ll need to have the necessary physical devices to cover different screen sizes, operating systems, devices, and browsers. It’s a good idea to have several versions of each browser installed.
Free unlimited cross browser testing tools can be useful in providing access to several browsers and devices. Incorporating these tools will enable you to do extensive testing while maintaining quality.
Challenges of Cross Browser Testing (And Solutions)
You may face the following challenges when implementing cross-browser testing:
1. Requires Knowledge of a Scripting Language
Developers must be fluent in coding languages before they can write or maintain automated test scripts.
Many organizations don’t have enough experienced testers to write and maintain test scripts at scale, making onboarding times longer for new employees with no coding experience.
Thankfully, no-code/low-code cross browser testing tools can help testers create and execute test cases.
Also, grouping less experienced testers with senior engineers to share best practices, tools, and techniques can still create a standalone testing team even if few of its members are ever good developers.
2. Not Ideal for Testing Complex User Journeys
Cross browser testing might not be able to emulate the specific interactions accurately in complex user journeys.
Critical paths might not be tested or can be under-tested when dynamic content loads or asynchronous operations take place, automated scripts will not be able to walk the critical paths and capture the behaviors like a human would.
Use automated tests for the repetitive and short (but mandatory) scenarios, but leave the complex user journeys with countless variation paths to manual testing with human judgment and actions.
3. Traditional Tests Require Infrastructure
The infrastructure required for traditional cross browser testing is resource-intensive. To enable as many types of testing as possible, one needs a multitude of physical devices and associated browsers.
This infrastructure can be expensive and difficult to build and manage, especially when it includes tests for fringe or esoteric browsers.
Cloud services will give you more options of browsers and devices than you can afford to keep on your desk, at a much-reduced cost, and without the logistical nightmares.
4. Updating Test Scripts is Time-Consuming for Engineers
Changes to the application, such as new features or bug fixes, often mean updating test scripts to keep them in sync and can take hours or even days.
Likewise, keeping track of browser updates and testing that everything still works can take a considerable amount of time for your engineers.
Use the best tools for AI UI testing that can create scripts in a modular way such that, if you alter the UI of your application, you only have to modify the corresponding modules rather than the entire set of scripts.
With these tools, you can pair automation with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines that can help with earlier detection of problems, plus you can reduce the manual effort of script updates.
5. Unclear Reasons Behind Test Failures
When a test fails, it might be unclear what’s causing the failure. It could be a bug in the test script, a failure from the browser’s rendering engine, or the application being tested.
Also, it can be difficult to know where to start when looking for the root cause of a test failure. Sometimes, engineers end up spending a lot of time filing, engineering, and discovering bugs they never really set out to find.
This can be improved with logging and reporting tools that provide detailed descriptions of tests together with error logs, screenshots, and videos of test runs.
Conclusion
Cross browser testing is essential for every webmaster that wants their site or web app to work predictably on any browser and device.
Start the testing campaign early in the development process and use both manual and automated testing to cover all scenarios.
One of the best tools to start with is QA.tech. It provides a testing environment that serves expert and non-technical testers. Want to get started with QA.tech? Click here!