You may have all seen that some websites do not appear correctly in some browsers, leading you to believe that the page is malfunctioning. However, as soon as you visit the page in a different browser, it loads without issues. Therefore, this behavior explains why a website should be compatible with many browsers.
With the development of technology, there are many browser alternatives accessible. Thus, making a website run on only one of them is no longer sufficient.
No particular browser should be required for users to access your application. The compatibility of your website with various browsers must thus be tested. Browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and others are some of the most popular ones.
By now, you must know that this blog will explore cross-browser compatibility.
Cross-browser testing is a sort of testing that determines if an application performs as intended and smoothly degrades across several browsers. It is the process of confirming your application’s compatibility with several browsers.
What Is Cross-Browser Testing?
Cross-browser testing is the process of ensuring that online applications function as intended across a variety of operating systems, devices, and web browser configurations. Even though all web browsers adhere to the HTML and CSS common web standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), each browser has its unique technique of rendering code.
These differences in form and function can be caused by several things, including:
• Variations in an operating system’s or browser’s default settings (for example, the default font used by a browser).
• Variations in parameters determined by the user, such as screen resolution.
• Inconsistencies in hardware performance may result in screen resolution or color balance variations.
• Variations in the engines that handle web instructions
• Differences in how different clients implement current web standards like CSS3.
• Utilizing assistive devices like screen readers.
Why is Cross Browser Testing Important?
Consider browsing a website containing every bongo cat meme ever created. Consider using your first MacBook Air to perform it for the first time.
The URL is entered into Safari, hit Enter, and you wait for it to load. None of the GIFs are loading when it does. There are text and buttons all over the website. You reload and verify your connectivity only to see the same screen.
In the end, one of two things will probably happen: either you’ll suppose there’s a problem with the site and leave to come back later, or you’ll assume the site is broken and go to find something else.
Although they adhere to Open Web Standards, browser companies have their interpretations. Thoroughly debugging your website’s source code won’t guarantee that it will appear and function as intended on various browsers because they render HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in different ways (or different versions of a single browser).
Web developers are, therefore, responsible for abstracting browser differences. Cross-browser testing in selenium aids in this by identifying browser-specific compatibility issues so you can easily solve them. It ensures that you aren’t alienating a big portion of your target market since your website doesn’t function properly on their browser OS.
Who Performs Cross-Browser Testing?
In a nutshell, cross-browser testing is available to everyone who designs or develops for the Open Web. Marketers and web designers may use interactive cross-browser testing tools to test landing pages and new designs for cross-browser rendering and responsiveness without coding knowledge.
QA teams use these tools to test scenarios across various browsers and make sure the build complies with browser compatibility standards. UI teams may use them to assess how the website front-end functions across various devices and orientations.
Stakeholders like the client, business analysts, and marketing professionals decide which mix of platforms, browsers (and their versions), OS, and devices should be tested across different browsers. Sometimes the decision-making process includes input from the testers and developers as well.
How to Perform Cross-Browser Testing?
Multiple devices, OSs, browsers, and machines may help to perform cross-browser testing manually, but doing so inevitably results in various issues, expenditures, and difficulties.
• Manual Method
Here, a company specifies which browsers the program must support. The same test scenarios are repeated using several browsers, and testers watch how the program behaves before reporting any errors.
It is impossible to test the application across a wide range of browsers in this manner, and major browser versions may not even be tested. Additionally, manually running a cross-browser check is expensive and time-consuming.
• Automated Method
Running the same set of test cases on several browsers many times is the essence of cross-browser testing. The ideal solution for this kind of repetitive activity is automation. As a result, employing tools to do this testing is more efficient in terms of time and money. Therefore, there are several products on the market to make this easier.
Bottom Line
Making your website user-friendly and accessible to the widest possible audience is your responsibility as a developer. It demonstrates a commitment to the user experience and a careful design process when someone using Internet Explorer can browse and enjoy a website like someone using Google Chrome can. This implies that customers are more likely to develop a sense of brand loyalty and are less likely to experience defects and unappealing layout components.
The bottom-line objectives are impacted by browser testing when consumers can easily read content and experience optimum functionality regardless of the device, operating system, or browser they access it from. Cross-browser testing in selenium not only promotes a favorable reputation.
