As we know, a lot of web content is available on the internet and mostly in the form of websites and webpages. Despite being a highly functional website, consisting of well organised data, it is still not available to most of the users due to device fragmentation. No device fragmentation occurs due to incompatible web pages. These webpages get crashed or do not load in the device due to their incompatibility with browser version or device version. Hence cross browser testing is a must to ensure that the website is compatible with all the versions of browsers and devices used by your target customers. Now let’s dig deeper into why cross browser testing is vital for building high quality websites.
What is Cross Browser Testing and Why is it Important?
You must have observed a crashed web page having bad pixel quality. This is due to the device fragmentation. Device fragmentation occurs due to incompatibility between the website and the browser and device version. For example, device fragmentation occurs when an app works well with a set of users having new versions of browsers while the apps fails to run on the devices of a set of users having older versions of browsers. Hence cross browser testing is done to ensure that the application is compatible with all the browsers and devices used by the target market.
In Spite of ensuring compatibility cross browser testing also ensures good UI along with excellent user experience. Incompatibility between apps and browsers can cause change in the UI elements. For example you can find the square corners replaced by round corners of a sign up box, due to incompatibility between the browser and application. Hence cross browser testing plays a great role in building a good UI and enhancing the user experience of the customer.
Your website is your online shop and main point of contact to your customers. Hence you have to make sure that along with seamless functioning, the customer enjoys the best user experience. Cross browser compatibility testing does not only mean ensuring compatibility between the applications and the devices and browsers, but also means validating that your website is working consistently over all the devices, browsers and os. Every browser interprets the code differently, so the developers should ensure that every browser ( whichever version) interprets the code of the application and provides seamless functioning and best user experience.
How to Perform Cross Browser Testing ?
Cross browser testing is complicated but following the simple steps mentioned below will make the journey simple and productive for sure!
- Make a list of devices and browsers
In cross browser testing, we deal with multiple device browser combinations which make the testing strenuous and tiring. But various combinations and testing them through several iterations is required to get accurate results. To make things simpler, make the right list of devices and browsers. To check the browsers and devices used by your target market, take help of analytical tools like google analytics and get the entire list of devices and browsers used by your target customer.
- Choose the best UI tools
For choosing the best UI Tools, do consider the factors like scalability, accessibility, a tool that allows integrating any number of tools, a tool which is adaptive to any environment. These factors allow you to choose the best automation tools for cross browser testing and achieve great test results. Scalability and accessibility provides the convenience of working across a number of devices and browsers at anypoint of time and from anywhere. The bottom line is that you have to choose the tools based on your requirements. There are a number of cloud based tools available in the market like pCloudy, selenium webdriver, etc. Based on your requirement you can choose the one which suits your needs.
- Analyse the reports
Cross browser testing is one of the most complicated testing because of the multiple device browser combinations. But analysing the test reports makes the journey much easier and simpler! So do refer to the test logs from the automated UI testing or any other reports availed by your testing tool. It will also help you track the flow of testing and ensure whether every step is being followed as intended.
Conclusion
Device fragmentation is a serious issue and needs to be dealt with to achieve compatibility for all the mobile applications. It also improves the overall user experience of the application. Hence cross browser testing is crucial to build high performing mobile and web applications. So, do refer the above blog, where I have covered what cross browser testing is and its importance.