In recent years, digitalization has been going to the next level. From small to big-level marketing, medical facilities, services, and many more, you can clearly see the influence of apps and websites. Also, hundreds of web browsers are being used by millions of users across the globe. The website company must ensure that the website is compatible enough to open and work in different web browsers. So, it becomes important to test different websites in different browsers.
Testing different websites in different browsers is also known as cross-browser testing. The end-user or customer who uses an application expects an assurance of quality. Organizations require a mechanism that makes it simple for developers to create the best web applications that work on every device. Also, they need to test the website in different browsers. In this article, you will see what are the advanced methods and tools you can use to test websites in different browsers.
Introduction to Website Testing
Website testing is defined as the process of making your website capable enough to work with full functionality and features across various types of web browsers and devices. There are many types of tests that can be done to meet the website testing. But cross-browser testing is one of the popular and recommended tests. It helps the developers and QA team to test different websites in different browsers. Testing websites in different browsers is essential when your website is going to operate on more than one web browser. It helps you to look at websites in different browsers and platforms with the eyes of end clients and reveals its functions in various browsers. Also, it helps to make sure that you do not need to make a separate website for a specific web browser. Testing websites on different websites helps you to analyze the target audience.
Why Cloud-based Testing over On-premise Testing
There are options to test different websites in different websites on the cloud as well as on physical infrastructure. But you should prefer cloud-based website testing due to many reasons. These reasons are as follows:
- Better Control: Performing testing for different websites in different browsers on the cloud provides you better control as compared to using physical infrastructure for testing. Better control over tests allows you to plan their upgrades and operational maintenance without having to rely on third-party companies.
- Scalability: Performing website testing on the cloud provided better scalability as cloud computing is scalable, allowing testers to add or decrease computing capacity quickly. It is better when the requirements of the client keep changing frequently.
- Cost-Effective: Performing testing for different websites in different browsers on the cloud is overall cost-effective. On the cloud, you need to pay for the resources that you use only. The cost of maintenance and upgrade is eliminated here.
- Comprehensive Testing: Performing website testing on the cloud provides a comprehensive testing result. To do extensive testing, the test team must run the application on a variety of devices, including those that support various platforms, operating systems, browsers, etc, and cloud-based testing can provide such facilities.
LambdaTest is an AI-driven platform for test orchestration and execution, designed to streamline both manual and automated testing across various environments. With access to over 3,000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations, it provides a scalable cloud grid solution.
To demonstrate, let’s see how to manually test websites on desktop using LambdaTest’s cloud:
- Log in to your LambdaTest account. If you don’t have an account, you can register on LambdaTest.
- Navigate to Real Time > Browser Testing.
- Enter the test URL, select the browser, and choose the VERSION, OS, and RESOLUTION. Then, click START.
- A cloud-based operating system will launch, allowing you to manually test your websites and web applications.
Advanced Methods for Testing Different Websites in Different Browsers
Now, let us see the various advanced methods for testing different websites in different websites.
Choosing the Right Combination of Devices and Browsers
Choosing the right set of devices and browsers is a very important and helpful method for performing website testing in different browsers. the testing team can make use of website data usage records to decide which devices and browsers your customer base is using. It will work as a key component to start the website testing on different browsers. After calculating the preference of your user’s choice of browsers and websites, you can create a list of them. Once the list of prioritized and must-have browsers and devices is made, you will need to make sure that you check and take action when older devices and browsers disappear and newer ones appear. This will help you to focus on the testing objective and deliver the best possible software testing result.
UI Test Framework for Web Applications
Using the UI-based test framework for your website testing on different browsers is one of the recommended and advanced methods. There are various website testing frameworks available in the market but Selenium is one of the most recommended. It is a reliable, robust, and popular UI testing framework. It’s not only one of the easiest web UI testing frameworks to learn, but also once adapted by the QA and development team, it avoids a lot of unexpected loopholes that we might face in the future. Selenium WebDriver is one of the components of the Selenium testing suite that is used to perform cross-browser testing. The work of Selenium WebDriver is to accept the commands and send them to the browser to execute. You can automate the website testing to check if the website is working as it is intended to be. Also, with the right UI testing framework, you can ensure the features and functionality of different websites in different browsers. This automation saves a lot of time for the testing team that they can use in some other productive work for the software application. But one thing to remember is that before automating the website testing, you need to evaluate the tests that are worth automating.
Using Automation and Parallel Testing
When you are performing website testing on different browsers, using automation testing and implementing the parallel testing concept is a must-do and advanced method. Along with automation testing, using parallel testing allows the developers and testing team to improve the website testing productivity and accuracy. And that too in less time. For example, If you were to test a combination of 10 different browsers and devices through a test case that takes 10 minutes to execute, it will close it 100 minutes to execute, but with parallel testing, it will take only 10 minutes for the entire task. So, parallel testing helps the team to perform testing for different websites in different browsers, and with the help of Selenium Grid, you can perform automation testing which allows you to run test cases in numerous environments at the same time. Combining these two advanced testing concepts makes an excellent testing outcome. Also, you can streamline this flow further by using a CI/CD pipeline using continuous integration. In continuous integration, the test cycles are executed earlier, and sometimes due to frequent commits, a centralized repository gets created.
Using AI-Powered Testing Tool
A software application or website can never be free of errors and bugs, no matter how much you try and make efforts on a specific website. However, you can definitely minimize the bugs and errors to make your website efficient and user-friendly. As we know, to make a website having the least errors and bugs, you need to test websites for different browsers. All the teams like SaaS product organizations use high-end technologies such as continuous integration and DevOps to get the best possible testing results at a faster speed. This is ok but using AI-based tools brings some amazing testing efficiency for testing different websites in different browsers. The AI tools can further increase testing efficiency and productivity by providing codeless solutions. It also saves the extra coding time. Apart from this, you can use AI and machine learning concepts to decrease the flakiness of the test cases. It will help you to minimize human efforts and involvement and work as a very advanced method for different websites in different browsers.
Allow Customization and Flexibility
In the current scenario of the dynamic market where the demand and trends of users change frequently, the software application industry needs a platform that is ready to accept such changes. It means that the website must be ready to bring any changes and updates as soon as the market trend changes with time. It should have such hardware and software integrations flexible enough to allow customizations at any given point in time. In the software application industry, the market trend is directly associated with the user base and their demands keep changing. So, it is important to allow customization and flexibility for the website is a must-to-follow method for browser testing in different websites. Also, the website should be able to adapt to the future requirements of the customers and capable of delivering quality products on time.
Choosing a Highly Scalable Platform
Performing testing for different websites in different browsers can be best achieved when you are able to meet the requirement for dynamic market demand. And this can be done when you are choosing a testing platform that is highly scalable. As a highly scalable platform will help you to add, remove, and configure the devices according to your need to test different websites in different browsers. It provides a number of browsers, devices, and their combinations. So, it is a must to follow the method of choosing a highly scalable platform for testing so you can meet the dynamic change requirement and test different websites in different browsers without affecting the other functionalities of the device lab.
Verify Feature Support
Verifying the feature support of your website is a must-to-follow method for testing different websites in different browsers. As a website testing team, you need to always check if all the features and functionality are working or not. As a website developer, you may know a lot of development and testing stuff but you may not know is that the feature is now deprecated or is about to. So the team must adapt the strategy to check and validate the features of the website.
Tools for Testing Different Websites in Different Browsers
Given below are the best tools that can be used to test different websites in different browsers.
- Selenium
- Functionize
- Katalon
- TestingWhiz
- Virtuoso
- Applitools
Conclusion
In this article, you have seen how is it important to make your website compatible enough to work without any malfunctioning in different types of web browsers. There various are tools and technologies available that can be used to test different websites in different browsers but by using some advanced methods, you can make your testing more efficient and productive. These advanced methods are like using AI-based tools and UI testing frameworks, choosing highly scalable platforms, etc.
