Testing for cross-browser compatibility is essential, especially for businesses that heavily rely on their website, such as online service providers. Despite undergoing various testing phases, if end-users are unable to interact with the website correctly, then all the efforts invested in the testing will be in vain. Therefore, cross-browser testing is crucial for ensuring a successful and smooth-running website, relieving some of the worries associated with website maintenance.
To ensure effective cross browser testing, it should be performed with careful consideration. As with any other testing approach, incorporating feedback from testing during the software development process is always beneficial. This post aims to provide tips for cross-browser compatibility testing, enabling you to develop a website that is partially compatible before the testing phase, resulting in a more streamlined process.
What is Test Optimization?
Test optimization is the process of enhancing the efficiency of testing procedures by reducing time and cost while maintaining accuracy in the test results. Effective test optimization helps QA teams to maximize their testing efforts and improve consistency in the long term.
- Prioritize tests: Prioritizing tests based on their importance and impact can help to optimize testing procedures. This approach involves categorizing test cases into high, medium, and low priority and testing them accordingly. High-priority test cases are those that have a high impact on the application’s functionality, whereas low-priority tests have a lower impact and can be performed later in the testing cycle.
- Automate testing: Automated testing is a proven way to optimize testing procedures. It helps to reduce the testing time and increase the accuracy of test results. Test automation can be used for repetitive tasks such as regression testing, which frees up QA teams to focus on more complex test scenarios.
- Use test management tools: Test management tools help QA teams to manage their test cases more efficiently. They offer features such as test case tracking, test case management, and test coverage analysis, which help to optimize testing procedures and streamline the pipeline.
- Collaborate with development teams: Collaboration between development and QA teams is crucial for effective test optimization. By working closely with developers, QA teams can identify potential issues early in the development cycle and resolve them quickly, reducing the overall testing time.
- Continuous integration and testing: Continuous integration and testing can help to optimize testing procedures by identifying defects early in the development cycle. By integrating testing into the development process, QA teams can ensure that issues are identified and resolved quickly, reducing the overall testing time and cost.
- Embrace agile testing: Agile testing is a methodology that emphasizes iterative development and testing. It involves continuous feedback and collaboration between the development and QA teams, which helps to optimize testing procedures and improve software quality.
By adopting these test optimization techniques, QA teams can streamline their testing procedures, reduce testing time and costs, and improve software quality.
1.   Code Validation
Code validation is a crucial step for website developers to ensure that their code adheres to W3C standards. Neglecting to do so can lead to negative consequences, such as what happened with Internet Explorer. It’s important to have a validated and well-formatted website not just for cross-browser compatibility, but for improved search engine optimization, easy maintenance, and more.
To make a website cross-browser compatible, developers can use validator tools available online or within text editors like Adobe Dreamweaver, which can also teach best practices in web development. Checking code for compatibility with standards is a simple step that can save time and effort in the long run.
2.   Create a browser matrix
To ensure cross-browser compatibility, it is important to create a browser matrix that lists the browsers and their versions that are being targeted for website development. However, catering to every browser and version is not feasible as browsers tend to accept and reject various CSS and JS properties over time with their new versions. Thus, it is crucial to decide which browsers to target and their version ranges.
The ideal way to create a browser matrix is to consider the target audience. If the audience is limited, such as employees of a particular bank who use Firefox 78, then the website should be developed accordingly. The browser matrix should be updated in accordance with the regularly updated browsers of a general audience, whose browsers are updated automatically in the background.
3.   Verify the feature support of the components
 As a developer, it’s easy to overlook whether a feature is deprecated or no longer in use. Ignorance of this fact can result in frustrating moments when the feature doesn’t work on the webpage.
Thus, it is necessary to always check the features on each browser that you are targeting. For instance, CSS Subgrids is supported on Firefox but not on Chrome. There are many such features that can hamper user experience, and it’s always better to be prepared and avoid repeating the work.
4.   Run tests simultaneously on multiple device-browser-OS combinations
Executing automated test scripts simultaneously across multiple device-browser-OS combinations is an effective way to accelerate the testing process while maintaining accuracy. This approach, called parallel testing, can significantly reduce the time it takes to complete a full test suite. For example, if a test suite consists of twenty tests and each test takes five seconds to run, executing each test on a different unique device in parallel can complete the entire test suite in only five seconds, compared to a hundred seconds on a single device.
To leverage the benefits of parallel testing, teams can use cloud-based digital experience testing platforms such as LambdaTest, which offers automated parallel testing on real devices and browsers. With access to over 3000 real devices and browsers, teams can execute both automated and manual tests for websites and mobile apps with ease. LambdaTest offers automated cross browser testing with frameworks such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright and more.
5.   Code only the necessary components
Developers often add unnecessary components to their website, increasing its complexity without any clear objective. This can create congestion on the landing page and pose a challenge to cross-browser compatibility.
The more components there are on a page, the greater the likelihood of issues arising, which can be time-consuming to fix. Since components are interdependent, even a small misalignment can cause chaos on the landing page. This may require readjusting all the elements or even more elements to get them properly aligned, leading to a repetitive process.
To minimize cross-browser compatibility issues, it is important to code only the necessary components. This will reduce the number of elements that could potentially cause problems, making it easier to maintain and improve the website’s compatibility across different browsers.
Benefits
Cloud-based testing platforms offer numerous advantages over on-premise testing. While physical device labs may provide a high level of security, they require significant investments of time, money, and effort to set up and maintain. On the other hand, cloud platforms can be accessed from anywhere and eliminate the need for physical infrastructure, reducing costs and streamlining collaboration among geographically separated teams. Additionally, cloud platforms provide 24/7 access and flexible working hours to ensure business continuity.
However, some SaaS products may not provide sufficient security measures. On-premise services, on the other hand, offer more control over maintenance and security but lack the scalability and flexibility of cloud-based platforms. An ideal SaaS product for testing should be highly customizable to meet an organization’s dynamic requirements, support multiple frameworks and environments, enable parallel testing, and scale easily. It should also support modern technologies like AI, machine learning, continuous testing, continuous integration, agile development, and DevOps. Furthermore, it should offer a wide range of device-browser combinations to ensure cross-browser compatibility with all devices in the target market and be fully compliant with your business’s security standards.
Newer Technologies
AI-powered testing tools are becoming more prevalent in the world of software development due to their ability to greatly improve the quality and speed of the process. While it is impossible to completely eliminate errors or bugs in software applications, AI can help to reduce their frequency and severity. As a result, SaaS product organizations are increasingly adopting technologies like continuous integration and DevOps to achieve faster and higher-quality results.
However, AI can take this a step further by providing codeless solutions that significantly reduce the time and effort required by QA teams. By leveraging AI’s ability to automatically generate test scripts, these tools can save significant amounts of time and effort that would otherwise be spent on manual testing. This frees up QA teams to focus on higher-level tasks such as analyzing results and identifying trends.
Moreover, AI and machine learning can help to reduce the flakiness of test cases. In traditional testing scenarios, test cases can be unreliable due to factors like the environment, network, and the software itself. However, AI can help to identify and mitigate these issues, making it easier to achieve automation with minimal human intervention.
Overall, the use of AI-powered testing tools can greatly enhance the software development process. They can help to reduce the frequency and severity of errors and bugs, while also improving the speed and efficiency of testing. As AI and machine learning continue to evolve, these tools will become even more powerful and effective, helping organizations to stay ahead of the competition and deliver high-quality software products.
Conclusion
Cross-browser testing is an essential task when it comes to website development. While it may seem logical to develop the website first and then move on to testing, this approach can result in a pile of issues. A website is not like a stack of mark sheets that can be checked at any time. Often, developers may notice that an element does not work as intended, which indicates poor planning in design and development.
To avoid such scenarios, developers can learn from their experiences and keep the above tips in mind. The tips provided in this post have stood the test of time and are highly recommended. However, they are not the only ones, and personal experiences can lead to the discovery of additional tips that can help fellow developers and testers.
