Are you struggling to implement browser compatibility on your recently developed web application? Don’t worry! We are here for you! Our article will help you digest the importance of cross-platform testing. We will also go into some of the common challenges of this process and effective techniques for ensuring the proper implementation of browser compatibility.
As testers we must strive to ensure that our web apps perform excellently irrespective of the device or the browser that our end users are using. The only way of implementing this process is the proper use of cross-platform compatibility testing.
However, considering that there are multiple browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and many others, it can be a challenging process to implement this step.
Understand Browser Compatibility
Before we start understanding the various techniques for efficient browser compatibility testing, let us understand its basic meaning and why it is important for your testing infrastructure. It refers to a website or web app’s ability to function correctly across multiple browsers.
We must remember that browser compatibility is not just about the rendering of the visual elements but also about ensuring that all interactive features, functionalities, and scripts operate without any error or unexpected behavior.
Let’s divert our attention to some of the major reasons that justify the implementation of browser compatibility:
- Inconsistent performance of web apps across different browsers can frustrate your users, which will lead to higher bounce rates on the application.
- Ensuring compatibility across various operating systems and browsers will provide a consistent experience to all users. This is also inclusive of all customers who will require the inclusion of assistive technologies.
- If you create a website that fails to perform accurately on all browsers, it will create a negative brand reputation and can also harm the credibility of your development practices.
- Your web app’s multi-browser compatibility will hugely control its speed, accessibility, and overall responsiveness. You must be aware of these factors as they will control the search engine rankings.
Common Challenges of Cross-Platform Testing
However, like any process in this world, cross-platform testing isn’t perfect. So, it is very important for testers to have a definite idea about some of the major challenges of cross-platform testing so that they can prepare themselves beforehand:
- Currently, there are multiple browsers that are available in the market, each having its own rendering engine and unique capabilities. Moreover, you should also consider the inclusion of older browser versions that will not support the latest web standards.
- It is also important to understand that a web application will render differently on various operating systems. These variations mainly occur due to differences in how these systems can handle layouts, fonts, and other media elements.
- With the increasing market for mobile and tablet browsing, websites need to be responsive and adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions, and touch interfaces.
- Different browsers have multiple levels of support for CSS and JavaScript standards. These changes in support level can lead to inconsistencies in how dynamic elements and styles are displayed on your web application.
- It is important to understand that certain browsers are more resource-intensive than others. There will also be differences in memory management, caching, and execution speed. All these variations can cause performance discrepancies on the app, depending on the browser.
Advanced Techniques for Effective Cross-Platform Testing
Based on our research and experience, we have created a list of some of the most advanced techniques for effective cross-platform testing:
Planning and Prioritizing The Tests
Before starting the actual testing process, it is very important for you to understand the target audience and prioritize the browsers and platforms accordingly:
- Are you ready to plan your test cases? Begin by using tools like Google Analytics or other platforms to understand which browsers, platforms, and versions are most popular among your target users.
- Move on to focusing on the target browsers like Chrome or Safari for new users. You can simply choose the most popular browsers. However, for long-term developers, you must choose those browsers that are particularly popular within your target audience base.
- You should also understand the minimum version of each browser that you need to support for the application. During this process, you must balance the user needs and also the development costs for the application.
- End the process by ensuring that mobile browsers like Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android are also included in the test plan. Why should you bother about mobile browsers? More than 50% of total Internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
Automated Testing Tools
The testers can massively improve the efficiency of the cross-platform testing processes by incorporating automated testing. Let us discuss some of the most popular tools that can assist you in this process:
- We will begin the list with Selenium WebDriver, one of the most popular open-source options for automated web application testing. It provides support for almost all the popular browsers that are currently available, along with multiple programming languages for creating the test scripts.
- Next on the list is Appium, which helps you perform automated web app testing on all mobile platforms like Android, iOS, and Windows. The most beneficial feature of Appium is that it uses a single API for executing all the test instances on your target devices, platforms, and browsers.
- You can also consider cloud-based platforms like LambdaTest for executing automated cross-browser testing. LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. Some of the additional features include comprehensive test reporting, live test activity logging, and native bug tracking.
Manual Testing And Exploratory Testing
Although automation testing is one of the most efficient ways of verifying the performance of multiple web applications on different browsers and other configurations, there are various parameters that are beyond the capabilities of automation testing. For example, it is almost impossible to verify the proper functioning of visual elements without the inclusion of manual testers.
Let us understand some other areas that require the inclusion of human developers:
- It is important to perform manual functional testing on the web elements for ensuring that all interactive elements like buttons, forms, and menus are working as expectated.
- It is also important to conduct exploratory testing for identifying edge cases or unexpected behaviors. In most scenarios, all these test cases are not covered by automated test scripts.
Responsive Design Testing
Since mobile devices are becoming the dominant device for accessing anything related to the web, it is very important to incorporate responsive design testing to ensure that your web applications can adapt to the various screen resolutions and sizes of modern mobile devices.
- Begin the process by testing how the website looks and behaves across different screen sizes. You must cover all devices beginning from small mobile devices to large desktop monitors.
- It is also important to use frameworks like Foundation or Bootstrap which will provide multiple predefined responsive grid systems and components. All these inclusions will allow you to ensure compatibility across multiple devices and browser combinations.
- Finally, you can end this process by implementing CSS media queries which will adapt styles based on device characteristics. The most commonly used characteristics include screen sizes, resolutions, and other orientations.
Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation
Testers must understand that two of the most important strategies for ensuring browser compatibility are progressive enhancements and graceful degradation:
- You can begin the progressive enhancement process by starting with the basic level of functionality and content accessibility across all devices and browsers. Then you can move on to more advanced browsers to enhance the experience for your users. You can perform this process by adding more complex features like animations, transitions, or JavaScript-based interactivity.
- To implement graceful degradation, you can start with a fully featured version of the website for modern browsers. After this process, ensure that older or less capable browsers can still access the core content and functionality. This feature must be available even if some advanced features are not supported.
Testing With Browser Developer Tools
You must be aware that most modern browsers come with their own developer tools. These tools can be one of the most valuable inclusions for modern cross-platform testing:
- You can begin by using the inspect and debug elements to check the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of the website. You can perform this process in real-time and identify issues that will be specific to the particular browser.
- The console of the developer window will also display JavaScript errors or warnings that may affect the functionality or core performance of the application infrastructure.
- The developer tools will also help you to monitor the current network that is being used by the application. This is a very important inclusion to understand performance bottlenecks or failed resource loading due to unstable network bandwidth.
- Finally, you can also test how the website responds to different screen sizes and resolutions. This testing will be restricted directly within the browser so that you can access the most accurate test results.
Best Practices for Cross-Platform Testing
Additionally, we advise the implementation of the following best practices to further optimize the quality and productivity of your cross-platform testing environment:
- You should create a matrix which outlines the combinations of browsers and platforms, including the mobile web browsers.
- It is also important to use tools like Dockers for creating consistent testing environments which will mirror your original production setup.
- It is important to regularly update your test cases to include the new browsers and versions which will be released.
- We advise the testers to work closely with the developers and designers. This collaboration will help you to identify potential compatibility issues at the earlier stages of the development cycle.
- Finally, you must prioritize accessibility to all users. Some of the most important components include screen readers or other assistive technologies.
The Bottom Line
Depending on all the factors that we discussed in this article, we can comfortably say that ensuring browser compatibility is a very important part of modern web development. This entire process will have a direct impact on the user experience, accessibility, and brand reputation.
Although this can be a challenging process due to various differences, you can use the right technique and tools to significantly streamline the entire implementation process.
Finally, by incorporating all the techniques that we discussed in this article, you can create websites and web applications which can deliver a consistent and high-quality experience to all your customers. Actions like these will also go a long way in massively expanding your target audience and helping build a positive brand reputation.
