Cross-Browser Testing: Advanced Techniques For Modern Web Apps

Are you struggling to implement cross-browser testing? You might not be the only one. Many new testers often find it difficult to set up and execute cross-browser testing in modern test environments. Don’t worry we are here for you! Our article will provide all the advanced techniques for cross-browser testing on modern web apps.

We will also provide various detailed insights and strategies to ensure that modern applications work flawlessly on different browsers and platforms. This is a very important factor to develop and maintain a positive brand reputation which will help you to massively progress in this competitive market. 

Importance of Cross-Browser Testing

Cross-browser compatibility testing helps you to understand the stable behavior of your application when accessed on multiple browsers, browser versions, and platforms. This approach helps to guarantee a uniform experience which in turn is essential to develop a brand reputation.

In case you fail to implement this process and provide inconsistent behavior across multiple platforms, you will face various adverse effects like loss of customers, poor SEO rankings, and a steep decline in overall user satisfaction rates. 

Challenges of Cross-Browser Testing

The testers must understand that cross-browser testing also comes with its own share of unique challenges that can massively affect the initial testing stages. To shed more light over this segment, we have mentioned some of the common challenges of this process:

• Different browsers have different ways of rendering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript elements. So, you must account for all these variations while creating the cross-browser test cases for individual browser versions.

• It is a common phenomenon that certain features of your web app may work perfectly in one browser and can crash in the other. These changes in browser behavior or browser-specific bugs can massively slow down the implementation of cross-browser testing.

• While implementing cross-browser testing, you will see that the performance of a web app will massively vary depending on browsers. This phenomenon is especially visible when you’re working with the mobile versions of modern web browsers.

• It can be an overall very complex process to ensure that a web app is responsive and functions well on all browsers including the desktop and mobile counterparts. 

Understanding Browser Differences

Before we understand the advanced techniques of cross-browser testing, we must understand the browser differences that we will be addressing through these techniques. 

Impact of Rendering Engines

As we already mentioned earlier, each browser uses a different rendering engine for displaying the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of a web application. To properly understand this segment, let us now divert our attention towards some of the most popular rendering engines that are currently used:

• The Blink engine is used by Chrome and Opera Mini browsers. It is a fast and modern rendering engine. The most important feature of this engine is that it is constantly updated with new features and improvements to ensure optimal user experience. 

• The WebKit rendering engine is exclusively used by the Safari browser for the entire Apple ecosystem. This engine is also known for its smooth rendering and efficient use of resources. Since it is locked within the Mac OS and iOS ecosystem, it provides various unique features that aren’t available on other platforms. 

• The Gecko engine is used by Mozilla Firefox. This engine is one of the very few rendering engines that maintain strict compliance with web standards and all the other strong privacy features. 

• Finally, the Trident and HTML engine is used by the older versions of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. Although these engines have been phased out in favor of modern browsers, they are still remotely used for their legacy support. 

The above list proves that each of these engines interprets code slightly differently, leading to potential variations in how a web page is displayed. It also causes changes in how various web pages function across multiple browsers. 

Browser Versioning and Legacy Support

As we all know, browsers go through regular updates to add new features, fix existing bugs, and implement security patches. However, companies must remember that not all users will update their browsers immediately. Instead, a survey shows that almost 75% of end users never update their browsers. 

Therefore while rolling out any web application, you not only have to ensure support for the latest versions but also for the legacy versions of the same browser as well. However, this process is easier said than done, as legacy browser versions have their unique challenges due to a lack of support for modern web standards. 

So, you must take the decision about how far back in the browser version history you want to extend the support for your web application. This will help you to balance the need for compatibility with the efforts required to maintain it. 

Advanced Techniques for Cross-Browser Testing

While implementing cross-browser testing, the application testers will come across various advanced features that will massively shape the efficiency and quality of the entire process. To shed more light over this segment, we have mentioned some of the most effective strategies and techniques on this list:

Automated Testing Tools and Frameworks

Automation testing is a very important part of the modern app development culture. This process will also benefit cross-browser testing by automatically running the test instances on your target devices, browsers, and platforms. Let us now divert our attention towards some of the most efficient platforms for executing automated cross-browser testing:

1.    Selenium

We can undoubtedly say that Selenium is the most popular option for executing automated web app testing in the present generation. It is technically a test suite that consists of various individual tools. All these tools are designed to assist you at different stages of the application testing process.

The testers can deploy the Selenium WebDriver and the Selenium Grid to execute automated cross-browser testing in a parallel configuration. The advantage of this approach is that it can wrap up the entire test suite within a fraction of the original time. With Selenium, you can also design the test cases in any of your preferred programming languages. 

2.    Cypress

Although Cypress isn’t a veteran in this segment like Selenium, it has been gaining a lot of popularity due to its unique features and ease of use. Testers must remember that although Cypress is an excellent solution for testing on modern browsers, it has limited features when it comes to older browsers or browser versions. 

Responsive Design Testing

Modern applications have adopted a responsive infrastructure that allows them to adopt their visual elements and functioning depending on the changing screen size, resolution and other parameters of the device. So, while implementing cross-browser testing, the testers must also ensure that the responsive design elements remain stable on all the target browsers.

Let us divert our attention towards some of the most important areas that you must cover in this segment:

• Test the application across different screen sizes and orientations to ensure the layout can adopt appropriately to all these variations.

• Use emulators and simulators to mimic the behavior of different devices and screen resolutions depending on the preference of a target audience.

• Finally, test on real devices to ensure the application functions as intended when subjected to real world parameters. 

Testing For Performance Across-browsers

Performance is a very important part of providing optimal end-user experience on multiple devices and browsers. So, while implementing cross-browser testing, you must ensure that the performance remains stable irrespective of the changing devices and browsers.

You can use various parameters like Lighthouse audits, WebPageTest, and browser profiling to ensure the optimal performance of your web application on all the target browsers. 

Handling Browser-Specific Bugs

As we already mentioned earlier, browser specific bugs are a common challenge of cross-browser testing. These bugs can arise due to variations in JavaScript execution, differences in rendering engines, and incomplete support for web standards. 

You can handle these bugs by implementing polyfills, conditional statements and using feature detections during the test execution process. 

Using Virtual Machines And Cloud-Based Solutions 

Virtual machines and cloud platforms are one of the most cost-effective and easiest ways of verifying a web app’s performance on multiple devices and browsers. 

While using virtual machines, you must be aware that they cannot mimic the physical parameters of a device, and so will not be accurate in all instances. 

On the other hand, you can use cloud platforms like LambdaTest to overcome the limitations of virtual machines in browser compatibility testing while not investing in an expensive physical lab. 

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automated testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. You can also integrate the Selenium WebDriver with LambdaTest to execute automated cross-browser testing. 

Future Trends in Cross-Browser Testing

Let us now divert our attention towards some of the most efficient future trends in the segment of cross-browser testing that you must be aware of:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to revolutionize cross-browser testing by automating complex tasks and also identifying patterns in the test results. 

• Artificial intelligence will also help predict compatibility issues and suggest fixes. Machine learning will help you to automate visual testing by automatically comparing screenshots with present visuals of the application.

• The increased adoption of progressive web applications will also have a significant stake in the future of cross-browser testing. Progressive web apps can provide a native app-like experience on the web. Adopting these apps, the developers will have to focus on offline functionality, service worker compatibility, and installation of updates over the web. 

• Finally, the increasing importance of mobile browsers will also continue to change the approach for responsive cross-browser testing. Companies need to increase their focus on mobile first design while ensuring cross-platform testing and optimal mobile browser performance. 

The Bottom Line 

Based on all the factors that we discussed in this elaborate article, we can conclude that cross-browser testing is a very important part of modern web development. This process ensures that web apps function properly across your target browsers and devices. By deploying all the advanced techniques from this article, you can create web apps that provide the most optimal end-user experience to your customers. 

With the steady improvement of tools and techniques used, cross-browser testing will also adopt advanced processes like artificial intelligence and progressive learning. So, we recommend the testers to stay on top of all these trends that will shape the future of cross-browser testing.

As software testers, we must always remember that our final goal is to ensure that our web apps remain performant, robust, and user-friendly in this increasingly complex digital world.