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Cross-browser testing is one of the essential factors in the testing process, especially for web apps. For businesses, it is crucial to test the compatibility of their web apps across different browsers and operating systems. There are various ways to perform cross-browser testing on web apps, but Selenium is considered the most effective method.
Selenium is one of the most widely used automation testing frameworks that is ideally used for cross browser testing. Besides being an open-source tool, Selenium gives you the freedom to experiment with your testing scenarios. Furthermore, it allows you to create and run test cases on applications while identifying the bugs in your application. Read more about what is Selenium.
Need for Cross-Browser Testing
Every web app consists of three major technologies, including HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. But, there are various technologies that run in the background, such as Python, Ruby, etc. Only three factors make all the difference on the front-end – HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. These factors can make your website worthwhile for visitors.
However, browsers have their significant way of displaying web pages. In addition, every browser has its unique rendering engine, which represents the web pages differently. Now, it’s not practical to create different apps for different browsers. This is where cross-browser testing comes into play. Cross-browser testing ensures that your web app renders ideally across all the browsers while finding the defects that can be altered to make them compatible.
Things to Know about Selenium Browser Testing
Selenium is not an ordinary tool; it is a suite of various applications used for automation testing. For example, Selenium WebDriver is a collection of language-specific bindings to drive a browser, and Selenium Grid is used to run tests against a vast combination of browsers/OSs. Before you begin with Selenium cross browser testing; you need to know a few things:
- More Browser Coverage
Browser coverage is an integral part of cross-browser testing, as the primary reason behind web app testing is to ensure it is compatible across all browsers. Thus, having access to all the browsers can be very helpful in cross browser testing.
Cross browser testing with Selenium allows you to perform rigorous code testing across multiple browsers while providing better browser coverage. This also helps you improve the user experience across the target web browsers. Besides, Selenium supports almost every browser available in the market to perform cross browser testing.
- Use Accurate JavaScript Libraries
As mentioned above, JavaScript is one of the essential languages in web app development. Thus, it is viable to use the right JavaScript resources and libraries that match site requirements. Besides, you also need to pay attention to task runners.
Various task runners can be used with Selenium, but Grunt and Gulp stand out as they can be automated according to your requirements. They can also enhance the overall application performance by offering compilation, minification, linting, and other capabilities to improve code quality.
- Use DOM IDs
Finding an element in DOM can be very complicated during the selenium test. But, IDs provide an excellent way for critical elements to identify within the entire product. Most testers often use XPaths, class paths, and other CSS selectors to identify essential elements. However, if a component moves to a different place in the UI, it becomes difficult to go back and find the element again.
With DOM IDs, you can quickly identify an element regardless of where it was in the DOM and what styling it uses.
- Identify and Analyze Browser-OS Configuration
As a tester, it’s your responsibility to determine which browsers and operating systems a site needs to be tested upon. For instance, every browser has multiple versions, and they keep on updating continuously. Also, there is no guarantee that users will be using the latest version of each browser. Thus, you need to verify what browsers, browser versions, and OS are being used by the targeted audience to perform the cross browser testing using Selenium.
You can make a list of the combinations of operating systems, browsers, browser versions, and devices that the audience might use to access your site. After finalizing your requirements, you can run cross browser testing with Selenium.
- Enhance Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is one of the traditional browsers available out there, and for some reason, you need to put a little more effort into testing your web app compatibility. For instance, Internet Explorer doesn’t support advanced CSS styles and frameworks. So, if your website consists of all the aesthetic elements and components, there is no guarantee that it will display accurately on the IE browser. To ensure the compatibility of your web app on the IE browser, you can create a separate stylesheet and add a hack in the doctype.
Automated Solution for Selenium Cross-browser Testing
The best way to execute cross browser testing is to use an automated solution that can easily be integrated with Selenium. There are various automation testing tools available in the market that support cross-browser testing. For instance, LambdaTest is an incredible platform that supports more than 3000 browsers, OS, and real devices for cross browser testing. The platform can perform visual testing, responsive testing, screenshot testing, and real-time testing. Some extensive features of LambdaTest are:
- Allows you to perform automated browser tests on a scalable, secure, and reliable selenium grid
- Run your selenium test scripts across Android, iOS, and desktop browsers with quick results
- Integrated with debugging tools to help you debug issues in live testing
- Allows you to test locally hosted web apps and sites to save them from deployment bugs
- Test your web app from different locations to ensure that users get a perfect experience across all locations
- Integrated with project management tools like Asana, Slack, JIRA, GitHub, Jenkins, Trello, etc.
- It comes with a record and playback feature to help you check your performed tests
Wrap Up
Cross browser testing could be a lengthy and hectic process that requires proper attention. Selenium helps you perform cross-browser testing efficiently by offering a seamless user experience. But, users still find it challenging to use Selenium for cross browser testing. This article highlights five things that you should keep in mind while using Selenium for cross browser testing. Besides, it also mentions an automated solution that can easily be integrated with Selenium.
Author Bio: Vixit Raj is Product Growth and Marketing Specialist in LambdaTest : The Cross Browser Web App Testing Platform. An E&C engineering background & Digital Marketing domain experience of 5+ years has aroused his interest towards learning about latest technology advancements, product marketing, coding and testing.