Automated cross browser testing is crucial for shipping applications with browser-based interaction points. Developers and QA teams spend hours on browser testing tools to automate test cases of their applications across many browser and platform combinations.
However, testing techniques and requirements for web apps have changed in recent years. It is time-consuming and challenging to keep your apps rendering appropriately on all the potential combinations of browsers. New challenges require efficient test automation, especially if you are still manually doing cross browser testing. Today’s blog will discuss cross browser testing automation and how you can benefit from it.
Cross Browser Testing and the Importance of Automating Your Cross Browser Tests
Cross Browser testing is non-functional testing to verify if an application works across various browsers as expected and upgrades gracefully. As a QA tester, you are responsible for ensuring that your projects work for all your users and that your application is compatible with different browsers and tools.
Cross browser testing is necessary because it makes sure that your application is functioning consistently and as intended without any dependencies or midpoint in quality. It helps ship a consistent user experience on a diverse, ever-changing range of browsers and devices.
Although, if you are using manual cross browser testing tools, it will be a time-intensive task. And in this world of the ongoing crisis, there is no time to spare. Web developers and testers are refocusing their resources to make cross browser testing more efficient to grow their trade and reach a much bigger audience.
Cross browser testing automation is a faster approach to manual testing. It helps you test your web apps on thousands of assortments of browsers and device types and replicate repeatable test cases. Automation testing meets today’s agile and CI/ CD requirements and ensures continuous delivery of quality software with shorter ROI payback time.
Benefits of Automated Cross Browser Testing
There are numerous benefits you can achieve from implementing automated cross browser testing. Let us discuss them in detail below:
#1. Saves Time & Money
As you build up large applications, the number of redundant test cases for an application on multiple browsers and OS can get considerable and unmanageable. With automated cross browser testing, you can find the bugs from the earlier stages and avoid executing a test over and over on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
This approach allows you to catch problems before they make it to production, save you time, lower the overall cost of production, and improve the overall ROI on testing. However, to maintain a relatively fast pull request process, be sure to include everything you want to execute in your test script.
#2. Allows Multiple Tests to Run Continuously
Testers and developers often use automated testing as a form of integration testing and regression testing. Automated tests run against the complete application whenever new code is introduced in the browser. It lets you ship code faster and catches potential bugs in complex interactions across different code components.
Suppose the developers implement a new feature in the web app. In that case, with the help of automation, the testers team can cut down time spent on manual testing from weeks to just a few hours. They can make it straightforward for the development team to resolve the bug and execute the feature more quickly.
#3. Provides Higher Test Coverage
One of the biggest challenges with manual cross browser testing is that it involves every type of test (short or long, depending upon the functionality) across the combinations of several browsers, OS, and devices. This combination of the test significantly impacts the overall cross browser testing approach.
However, that is not the case with automation testing. Suppose you have to run a 15-minutes long test across a combination of 10 different browsers, and you have only 2 hours to complete the test. In that case, cross browser testing automation is your best bet because it will allow you to execute tests quickly and with less effort.
#4. Improves Accuracy of Test Results
Sometimes even the most skilled testers can make blunders, and it is much more difficult to achieve efficiency in cross browser testing manually.
But, with automated browser testing tools, you can execute the tests more accurately, avoiding human errors and recording their detailed report. The detailed information helps the testers to create new automated tests and efficiently deal with complex features by providing accurate results.
#5. Provides Scalability and Flexibility To Your Tests
We need to test the devices with the latest version for successful cross browser testing. However, development teams usually have limited resources available for manual testing.
As a result, a scalable platform can add or even reduce the number of devices when the application grows. Hence, scalability is trouble-free to accomplish in a cross browser platform.
#6. Use Your Preferred Browser Testing Tool
From a list of free and paid browser testing tools available in the market, you can choose the best-compatible tool depending on your needs. The best element about these tools is that you don’t need in-depth knowledge to use them. With a bit of practice, you are good to use them effectively.
Conclusion
Every business would agree that automated cross browser testing is vital for their web apps in an ideal world. Unfortunately, many companies depend on manual techniques to test their web apps, which is time-consuming and demands great testers and developers.
However, picking a third-party service provider like HeadSpin can help you leverage the cross browser testing automation process.
HeadSpin is a continuous testing platform to offer a solution for global testing, performance monitoring, and QoE management requirements. HeadSpin guarantees optimal digital experiences across mobile and web delivery channels with their AI testing and DevOps collaboration platform.
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