In today’s fast-paced world, even a slight delay in loading a web page will make users switch to another website, leaving fewer chances to return to a website after a bad experience. Therefore to prevent the negative experiences faced by users, ensuring consistent and smooth functionality of websites across all environments has become crucial for developers. This is where the role of cross-browser testing comes into play. This testing approach verifies that the web app performs optimally across different browsers, enabling developers to retain their users by providing a seamless web experience.
Additionally, performing cross-browser testing has become more relevant than ever because of the availability of an array of browsers, each with their rendering engines, and the constant updates they undergo.
Given the multitude of browsers and versions, the challenges of such testing are many. However, improved user satisfaction and consistent and smooth functionality across browsers make this testing an indispensable part of the web development process.
In this article, we will explore various aspects of cross-browser testing, from strategies to tools for testing consistency across diverse browser environments in website development. Before we start, let’s first have a brief introduction to cross-browser testing, why it is important, and what challenges testers face while achieving cross-browser compatibility. So let’s start.
Cross-browser compatibility testing
Cross browser testing is a practice of verifying that a web application or a website works as expected across different browsers, operating systems, and devices. Although all web browsers support the common web standards including HTML and CSS developed by the W3C Consortium, many different combinations of web browsers can still render code differently.
For example, when a web page is open on Chrome, it looks perfect, with all images, buttons, and text alignment properly. However, if the same page is open on the Safari browser, the layout appears distorted, images are misplaced, and some buttons are unresponsive. This inconsistency can make users frustrated and drive them away.
Therefore ensuring compatibility becomes paramount as it involves checking a website or web app’s performance, design, and functionality works seamlessly on different browsers. The core objective of this testing approach is to identify and resolve issues and provide users with a consistent and reliable experience regardless of the browser they use.
Why is cross-browser testing important?
Cross-browser testing helps developers identify and address compatibility issues early across various web browsers. This testing process is responsible for ensuring a seamless web experience across different browsers and devices without hindering their functionality and accessibility. Below are some key reasons why cross-browser testing is important:
- To ensure that the web application’s consistent functionality across browsers for a seamless experience.
- To identify and resolve browser-specific bugs in multiple browser versions, ensuring the application works correctly for all users.
- Maintain brand credibility by meeting the highest quality standards and providing consistent user experience.
- Providing accessibility to users with disabilities by using supporting technologies like screen readers and alternative input devices.
Key Challenges in testing consistency across multiple Browser
Testing for consistency across various browsers is a multifaceted task. It involves navigating various challenges due to the sheer diversity of browsers and their versions that interpret and display web content differently. This can significantly impact the user experience if not properly addressed. Blows are some of the primary challenges developers face.
Different Rendering Engines- Different browsers use different rendering engines and each of them handles web standards differently. This causes inconsistencies in how browsers display the web pages and how websites behave across different browsers. For example, Chrome and Opera use Blink, Firefox uses Geko, and Safari uses WebKit.
CSS and HTML Standards- Different browsers have unique behaviors and quirks because of varying levels of support for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards. Websites might render perfectly in one browser but not in another because some browsers might fully support the latest CSS and HTML specifications, while others interpret them differently. These inconsistencies can lead to functional and visual discrepancies like layout issues, and broken styles, across multiple browsers impacting user experience.
Complexity in responsive design – With the rise of mobile browsing, ensuring a responsive design has become essential in web development. Desktop browsers often have different capabilities and limitations than mobile browsers. Thus, ensuring that the layout, design elements, and interactive features work seamlessly across all devices, from the smallest smartphone to the largest desktop screen adds another layer of complexity to cross-browser testing.
JavaScript Execution- JavaScript is a core component of modern web applications. However, due to differences in JavaScript engines, it can behave differently across browsers. For example: Chrome and Opera use V8, and Firefox browser online supports SpiderMonkey. Differences in JavaScript engines can result in variations in script execution, and affect performance optimizations and security features.
Security and Privacy Features- Different browsers implement different security and privacy features, affecting how websites function. For example, differences in handling cookies and content security policies can lead to compatibility issues. Hence ensuring that the website follows security and privacy practices while maintaining functionality across browsers also becomes challenging.
Best Practices for testing consistency across browser
Use CSS Resets and Normalizers
Browsers may render CSS properties like margins, paddings, and positioning differently. CSS reset style sheets help to create a more uniform baseline test across multiple browsers and mitigate inconsistencies in default browser styling.
Progressive Enhancement
Progressive enhancement involves building a basic level of user experience first and then adding enhancements progressively for browsers that support more advanced features.
Graceful Degradation
It ensures that the site remains functional on older browsers, and users can still get a functional experience, even if some advanced features are unavailable on their old browsers.
Test Early and Often
Incorporate “browser compatibility tests” throughout the development process. Utilize automated tools to test websites on different browsers and devices. Early testing helps in identifying and resolving issues before they become more complex and costly.
Integrate with CI/CD Pipelines
Incorporate cross-browser testing into continuous integration, and continuous deployment pipelines. This will help to catch compatibility issues early in the development cycle with each code change. CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, and CircleCI facilitate this.
Utilize multiple libraries and frameworks
Cross-browser compatible automation frameworks like Selenium and Cypress allow the writing and running of test scripts that can interact with different browsers and platforms. These frameworks offer an easy setup for end-to-end cross-browser testing focusing on real-time browser interactions.
JavaScript libraries like jQuery can handle cross-browser inconsistencies, particularly with older browsers and simplify development tasks. CSS frameworks like Bootstrap provide a set of pre-designed components and a responsive grid system for compatibility across various browsers.
Use browser developer tools
Browser Developer Tools provide essential features for debugging and testing web applications directly within browsers, particularly when dealing with cross-browser compatibility. They enable inspection and modification of the HTML, and CSS, of the web page, as well as the emulation of different devices, and simulating network conditions. This helps in identifying and fixing inconsistencies across different browsers.
Stay updated with browser changes
Browsers constantly evolve, hence keep the development team updated on target browsers and their latest versions. Regularly staying updated with new features, standards, and changes in browser technologies is crucial for maintaining compatibility and ensuring a high-quality user experience.
Focus on core functionalities
Ensure that the core functionality of the application works in all browsers. Implement advanced features progressively, so that users with modern browsers get enhanced experiences without excluding users with older browsers.
Use Modernizer
Relying only on browser detection can be unreliable and prone to errors. Utilizing feature detection libraries like Modernizr will allow you to check whether the browser supports specific features and implement fallbacks or alternative solutions accordingly. This will ensure that the web application functions properly even if the user’s browser does not natively support some features.
Utilize browser testing tools
Leveraging cross-browser testing tools allows automated testing of applications across various browsers and devices. These tools offer real-time testing environments and automated testing capabilities, enabling quickly covering a broad range of scenarios and browsers.
Cross browser testing tools
Below are some of the most widely used tools that testers can use to perform cross-browser testing.
LambdaTest
LambdaTest is an AI-driven testing platform that provides testers access to a cloud-based infrastructure to easily test websites on various browsers and devices. This is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform utilizing which users can perform automated and manual cross-browser testing at scale.
Utilizing this scalable, secure, and reliable cloud-based platform, testers can also perform real-time and automated cross-browser testing of their public or locally hosted website or web app across more than 3000 environments, real devices, and browser versions on demand.
This platform provides live interactive and parallel testing features, allowing web developers to execute multiple tests simultaneously to expedite their website’s testing across multiple browsers, devices, and operating systems easily. This approach not only reduces overall test execution time but also facilitates faster feedback on compatibility issues.
Selenium
Selenium is a widely used web automation framework, well known for automated browser actions. It supports multiple programming languages, and integrations with various testing frameworks. Selenium makes it very easy to run the same test cases multiple times across multiple browsers, making it the most preferred choice for automated testing. It includes various tools each catering to different web automation testing needs.
BitBar
Bitbar offers a cloud-based real device lab that ensures providing users with optimal web and mobile experience on the latest and most popular browsers and devices.
Using this cloud-based real device lab tester can easily run manual and exploratory tests across a range of real browsers, desktop, and mobile. This reduces the burden of cross-platform testing by minimizing the hassle of setting up infrastructure, its ongoing maintenance, and browser, and device upgrading.
Browserling
This is a real-time cross-browser testing testing tool that provides effortless testing services to web developers and web designers. It allows testing for websites by providing quick access to a range of browser versions and operating systems. Some of its key features include screenshots, session recordings, and live interactive and visual testing.
TestGrid
TestGrid is a public cloud that offers a combination of real devices and browsers to help testers run automated tests on the cloud and get accurate results. It allows testers to create tests in a scriptless manner, making it easily accessible to those who may not be well-versed with prior programming knowledge. Its automated cross-browser testing capabilities allow running tests parallely across browsers to speed up the testing process or in sequence depending on the needs of the test case.
TestGrid can be integrated with the CI/CD tool for continuous testing. Additionally, its integration with various bug tracking and management tools JIRA, Asana, Slack, and more allows developers to manage tasks and track progress related to testing and development, thus catching and resolving bugs on the go.
HeadSpin
HeadSpin provides a cloud-based platform enabling users to conduct cross-browser tests on various browsers and devices in the cloud. The platform allows testers to test the responsiveness of their mobile applications or websites remotely and ensure how it looks on different screen sizes and devices. Additionally, to ensure highly accurate results they can perform performance tests, such as load testing, on authentic environments.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that testing for consistency across multiple browsers is a critical strategy for ensuring web application’s seamless functionality and uniform user experience, regardless of the browser or device used.
Implementing the above knowledge and following the mentioned best practices testers can systematically simplify issue resolution, optimize performance, and enhance usability. This helps ensure that the web application performs consistently across various platforms, providing a seamless and reliable user experience.