In the process of delivery of web-based or mobile-based software in the market, the website needs to function in all the different types of environments as intended. When the testing is done in line with the expectation of the users across different web browsers is known as cross browser testing. Faster and better cross browser testing is the main demand in today’s markets. Say, for example., if the developer develops the application in only one browser and one operating system, how can it be made sure that issues or bugs on other browsers will not escape to their user? Thus, faster and better cross browser testing is essential to detect the bugs before the product is released in the market and help the company to earn good business. However, if it is done manually, cross browser testing is very time intensive. The developer and company are refocusing their resource to make cross browser testing faster and better. This is achieved by automation testing. The present blog will detail the use of automation testing for Better and Faster cross browser testing.
Let’s get started with the fundamentals of automation testing and cross browser testing.
Table of Contents
- 1 Automation testing
- 2 Cross browser testing
- 3 Major reason for the emergence of cross browser issue
- 4 Explore: Automated cross browser testing
- 5 Need of automation testing for cross browser testing
- 6 Highlights on the significance of automated cross browser testing
- 7 Challenges of automated cross browser testing
- 8 Tools used for automation testing
- 9 Conclusion
Automation testing
It is defined as the software testing process that performs with the use of special automated testing tools for the execution of test case suites. It is the most preferred testing approach to increase the effectiveness, coverage of the test, and execution speed in software testing. It provides enhanced outcomes and lowers the instances of human errors by generating fast testing results. In cross browser testing, automation has gained huge popularity due to its greater accuracy.
In addition, when the automated test is created, it can be easily repeated and extended to execute impossible errands with manual testing. Thus, savvy managers prefer automated software testing as the practical and efficient part of the development project.
Cross browser testing
Cross browser testing signifies its name, which is to test the web page or application’s working, functionality, and performance in multiple browsers by ensuring that it is working consistently without any issue in the quality.
It might come into your mind on why we need to perform cross-browser testing. Here the answer is simple. For example, a web-based application is completely different from a windows application and it can be opened in any browser by the end user. As some prefer to open Twitter in Firefox, and others may use Chrome Browser or IE. In the below image, you can see that in IE, the login box has no curve at the corners; however, it is visible in the Chrome browser. Thus, it is essential to ensure that the working of the application is similar and expected in all different browsers to make it accessible and usable by the people. This could be achieved by cross browser testing of the application.
Major reason for the emergence of cross browser issue
The common reason due to which cross browser issue arise and signifies the need for better and faster cross browser testing approach are highlighted below:
- Mismatch of Font size in diverse browser
- Different implementations of JavaScript
- Image orientation
- Different HTML validation and CSS.
- Browser incompatibility with OS.
Thus, mitigation of the above issues is of prime significance in cross browser testing, done by automation testing. This is better explained in the below section.
Explore: Automated cross browser testing
Automated cross browser testing is defined as the process which makes use of tools to test the web application for ensuring that it executes its role as expected in different browsers.
In the current time, there is no one who would argue against the benefit of automation testing in cross browser testing; you definitely want to test multiple different browsers in an automated way.
Cross browser testing is regarded as the end-to-end testing and validate the complete application. It easily detects bugs which is difficult by a unit test based on the fact that it is caused by the association between diverse modules of the application or external dependencies and services.
With automation testing, cross browser testing is easy, faster, and better.
Need of automation testing for cross browser testing
To understand the need for automation testing in cross browser testing, it is essential to highlight the manual testing process.
Manual testing of the browsers is the approach of testing the web application using human efforts and not using any of the automated tools or scripts. It mainly tests the functionality of the features according to the requirement of the company and reports the bugs in the software. It is a fact that manual testing requires lots of human effort.
It involves the creation of test cases and requires performing test execution manually. It is indeed a time-consuming and slow process. However, if you wish to test the functionality of the application over web cross, for example, 40 multiple web browsers and OS, there may be better approaches than manual testing. It will become unjustifiable for the incur of time and resources used.
On the contrary, automation testing is the faster and better approach to manual testing, articulated by the fact that it can replicate repeatable test cases. Automation testing can create automated test scripts, execute the run and initiate a comparison of the actual outcome with the expected outcome.
However, the use of automation testing in cross browser testing is fully automated, it also requires human effort to make test scripts. Such scripts can then be used for multiple test execution across various browsers.
Thus, the main objective of automation testing in cross browser testing is to finish the test execution process in less time and with accuracy.
Highlights on the significance of automated cross browser testing
A huge struggle is a witnessed in manual testing as different test is created for different combinations. Performing testing of every combination is not only time consuming but also does not guarantee test coverage. Automation testing is beneficial in ensuring the quality and reliability of cross browser testing. Some of the importance of automated cross browser testing is explained below:
- It helps in saving time and money.
Automation testing seamlessly runs repetitive tests on one application in different browsers, OS platforms, and devices. In cross browser testing, the tester uses the automation testing method as it allows to execution of the code faster.
- You can reuse existing tests many times.
Automation testing has a crucial role in regression testing. The tester can execute the test cases with the use of automated test scripts, which can use many times. The same set of tasks can be repeated on various browser and which ease the identification of bugs.
- It gives good test coverage.
If the web application requires to be tested, multiple browsers and environments will need to be tested, including the UI tests, module-wise functionality validation, and field-level validations. In line with the scenario, short and lengthy tests can impact cross browser testing. Thus, with the use of automation testing, better test coverage is achieved.
- It can easily and quickly fix bugs.
Automation testing helps to find the bugs quickly when it places a high number of test cases that can be executed in a few hours. Thus, in cross browser testing, automation reduces the time of testing, which can be further used in reporting and finding issues to the developers.
Challenges of automated cross browser testing
The main challenge in automating cross browser testing is that task is more challenging than it seems. Having appropriate tools and a better plan for performing automation cross browser testing takes time and effort. Thus, there is a need to choose the best cross browser testing tool or platform which helps in addressing the testing requirement. For example, LambdaTest- a cross browser testing tool provides cloud infrastructure for above 3000+ browser and operating system combinations. It also allows the selection of the latest browser version and testing of the web application on the current versions.
In addition to the above, too many browsers and operating system combinations to test are a great challenge in cross browser testing. To address this, automation testing provides an option for parallel testing, which can help test multiple test cases all together. This indicates that automation testing is for better and faster cross browser testing.
Tools used for automation testing
To perform the automated cross browser testing, we can use different types of tools that ease our work. Some of the most useful tools for cross browser testing are explained below:
- LambdaTest: It helps performs cross browser testing on both mobile and desktop browsers, which does not require installation as it is cloud based platform. It helps to run a test across various browsers and devices. It guarantees faster test execution than any other cloud grid. With LambdaTest, Selenium test automation scripts can be run across online selenium Grid of different operating systems. We can develop and test with automated cross browser testing with the use of the online LambdaTest Online Automation Browser Testing Grid.
- Testsigma: It is also a could based automation testing tool that supports cross-browser testing. It is a codeless testing tool that indicates that we can write test cases in any language and translate it into codes.
- Perfecto: It is also the cloud’s best automation testing tool that is known to support cross browser testing. It is maintained by AI and accompanied by hundred of real devices along with different OS combinations and browsers.
Conclusion
In the present blog, we have discussed automation testing for better and faster cross browser testing. It has given immense information on automation testing and cross browser testing which can help to get started with. Automating cross browser testing has become important for almost all software companies and businesses that have the aim to perform their application uniformly in all the devices they support.
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