The web development landscape nowadays is growing rapidly, making it vital to ensure that the website runs properly across a variety of devices, web browsers, and operating systems in a. Cross-browser testing can ensure that a website or web application operates and appears the same across different devices as well as across all possible browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge, and operating system. 

User experience can be negatively impacted by an inconsistent browser, which may hamper search engine rankings and user engagement. Performing browser testing can help testers and developers get rid of all the inconsistencies and assist in offering a standardized experience, irrespective of the browsers users choose to access their website or web application.

This article will explore the importance of cross-browser testing for ensuring compatibility across all platforms. It will also discuss the strategies, common issues, tools, and best practices, that allow developers to ensure a website functions correctly and looks visually appealing across all platforms. Thus providing a comprehensive understanding of this essential aspect of web development.

What is cross-browser testing?

Developers and testers do not want their websites or applications to look different or unorganized on different browsers. Different browsers display web content differently, no matter which browser they are using, cross-browser compatibility testing helps ensure consistency in presentation. It is a testing process for validating that the application under test works as expected on various browsers, operating systems, and devices, at varying viewport sizes.

Cross-browser testing opens the website or application in different browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc, then checks for functional or visual differences. This testing can either be performed manually or as part of a test automation strategy. The tools required for cross-browser testing can be built in-house and free of cost or provided by external vendors on a chargeable basis. The cross-browser testing tool helps in checking for any layout issues, such as overlapping or misaligned elements to ensure that all features and functionality work as intended. 

Ways to perform cross-browser testing

Cross-browser testing is mainly performed in two different ways:

Manual cross-browser testing

In manual testing, a cross-browser testing tester needs to install several browsers and operating systems on various desktops and mobile devices to manually perform the same test cases in each chosen environment. This process becomes time-consuming and exhausting for testers making the entire testing duration enormous. 

They need to report the changes in functionality on different web clients or execute test scripts on other clients manually. This kind of testing is best suited for small websites and applications, but as the application scales up automated cross-browser testing comes into play to complete testing activities quickly.

Automated cross-browser testing

Manually testing a website across multiple browsers, which involves every single element and page is not possible in today’s scenario as there are various browsers, operating systems, and devices available in the global market. To cover such a vast combination manually is practically impossible.

Hence, automating cross-browser testing becomes an essential aspect to ensure that the application performs uniformly regardless of the device. Automated testing allows testers to save their time and effort, which can be utilized in other tasks, such as improving the shortcomings or fixing bugs in their website or web app.

Also, it reduces the risk of human error since all the work is done automatically, and testers are not overworked, thus increasing productivity by not going into manual tasks.

However, it is important to note that the involvement of human interaction may often be required to test every aspect as precisely as nearly 100 percent is beyond one’s means.

Benefits of ensuring browser compatibility across all platforms

Assuring functionality across platforms: Each browser interprets code differently. With cross-browser compatibility, all functionalities, from interactive elements to complex scripts will seamlessly work across different platforms and browser versions.

Uniform layout and user interface: Layouts, design elements, and styles may often render differently across browsers. Performing cross-browsing compatibility tests ensures a consistent visual presentation and preserves the intended layout and user interface regardless of the browser.

Enhanced accessibility: To enhance the accessibility of websites, cross-browser testing plays a vital role. It ensures that web content is accessible across different browsers and promotes inclusivity, providing users with diverse needs and preferences.

Ensures a positive user experience: A seamless and consistent experience across all platforms is the most important aspect nowadays. Users are more likely to leave the website and shift to a competitor if their preferred browser does not perform well. Hence performing cross-browser testing helps in identifying and fixing compatibility issues and ensures a positive experience for everyone.

Wider audience reach: Internet users have a wide collection of browsers at their disposal, and each of them carries its unique features, rendering engines, and capabilities. Neglecting cross-browser testing may risk alienating a significant portion of the target audience. Cross-browser testing helps them get a broader audience and maximize the website’s potential.

Boosts Search Engine Optimization (SEO): When ranking websites, search engines like Google consider website responsiveness and user experience. A website might be penalized by search engines that display inconsistencies across browsers. This can be overcome by cross-browser testing which helps to ensure that the website functions optimally, and the search ranking can be improved potentially.

Reduces development costs: Once a website is released fixing compatibility issues can be time-consuming and expensive. Performing cross-browser testing proactive during the development phase can help identify and fix problems early on, this approach saving time, money, and frustration in the long term.

Enhances brand reputation: A website can create a negative impression of the brand due to being riddled with browser compatibility issues. Cross-browser empowers testers to provide a polished and professional online presence that improves credibility with the audience and helps boost trust.

Common cross-browser compatibility issues

Cross-browser compatibility can help testers by offering them a well-functioning product regardless of the device, browser, or operating system they are using. However, several problems may occur when testing is undertaken for cross-browser compatibility.

Different CSS rendering: Multiple browsers handle CSS rules differently. Which leads to unnecessary spaces, inconsistent layout, and font rendering. To avoid such issues it is necessary to rely on the standard CSS compliant for a constant rendering.

Compatibility with JavaScript: JavaScript behavior may differ across various browsers. Some latest features of JavaScript do not support older browsers or may often require polyfills or transpilers to work.

Unsupported HTML5 and CSS3 features: Browsers do not support the latest HTML5 and CSS3 features sometimes. Unsupported features may cause broken layouts or missing functionality in certain browsers. Proper research and understanding of which HTML5 and CSS3 features are supported in the target browsers can help prevent this.

Touch and gesture issues: Mobile browsers control gesture events and touch differently, which may affect the usability of touch-friendly websites.

Browser-specific bugs: Sometimes browsers may have some bugs that themselves are responsible for creating a major fault. It is a must to remove those bugs to maintain the best user experience.

Best practices for ensuring compatibility across all platforms 

Web developers and testers can effectively tackle the challenges of cross-browser compatibility by adhering to these best practices and delivering reliable web experiences.

Identify target browsers: Analyze the browsers that are most commonly used by the target audience then focus the testing efforts on these specific browsers. This approach ensures the best user experience for the majority of visitors.

Categorize popular browsers: Always prioritize the most popular web browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. These majorly used browsers always have larger user bases and are more likely to be used by most of the users.

Test on mobile devices: Testing on mobile browsers is often needed, including Android Chrome, and iOS Safari, as a significant portion of internet traffic is made up by mobile users. It will ensure that the website is responsive and works seamlessly on mobiles.

Use browser developer tools: Testers must familiarize themselves with the tools available in modern browsers. These testing tools let them inspect elements,

debug JavaScript, and simulate different browser environments, which helps in identifying and fixing issues much easier.

Regularly update browser list: Always keep the list of target browsers up to date. New versions of browsers are released regularly making the older versions less relevant. Testing on the latest browser versions is a must. To fix potential problems before they become widespread

Validate CSS and HTML: Validation tools such as the W3C Markup Validation Service and CSS Validator can always be beneficial to check the code for compliance with web standards. Valid code is mainly responsible for ensuring uniform rendering in all browsers.

Use automated testing framework: Automated testing using tools like Selenium, Puppeteer, or TestCafe allows testers to create and run test scripts across various browsers automatically. This helps in saving testing time and ensuring consistency.

Review and update regularly: Stay informed about recent developments in web standards is a must such as browser updates, best practices, etc. By properly reviewing and updating the testing techniques regularly. will help in ensuring cross-browser compatibility.

Document and track issues: Always maintain a detailed log of cross-browser compatibility issues and their resolutions. Documentation of detailed reports will help testers and developers address similar issues in the future.

Tools for cross-browser testing

To simulate user interactions on different browsers and devices, leveraging cross-browser testing tools provides access to test efficiently on a wide range of browser and operating system combinations without setting up multiple physical environments. There are various cross-browser testing tools available, some of them are listed below.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest is a cloud-based AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that runs large-scale automated and manual testing of web and mobile applications. It is a cross-browser compatibility testing platform where testers and developers can test their website’s browser compatibility both in real-time and automated across more than 3000 environments, real mobile devices with different resolutions, configurations, and browsers online. This helps ensure that the web apps run smoothly on all browsers, empowering testers to achieve seamless browser compatibility regardless of their browser.

With its parallel testing capability, LambdaTest ensures testing simultaneously on all browsers from the oldest to the most recent versions including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Opera, to speed up the testing process. It also provides users the flexibility to choose from a wide range of updated Android and iOS mobile devices. This approach allows them to develop and release error-free applications.

Selenium

Selenium is a powerful and widely used web automation testing framework among developers worldwide. It remains a reliable choice for automating web browsers because of its extensive capabilities and open-source nature. It supports nearly all of the programming languages including Java, Python, C#, and more, helping testers simplify the process of test creation and test execution across different platforms. Its vast array of tools and libraries equips testers and developers with the resources to seamlessly interact with web applications. 

Additionally, Selenium gives testers the ability to test across major browsers. such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Selenium can also be seamlessly integrated with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

TestCafe

TestCafe is an open-source Node.js tool that is utilized worldwide for comprehensive cross-browser testing. It enables testers to test web-based applications across all popular devices and browsers. including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari without the need for browser plugins. With TestCafe testers can run multiple tests concurrently to speed up the testing process. It allows testers to create tests in both JavaScript and TypeScript to ensure compatibility.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cross-browser compatibility always remains an essential aspect of web development for delivering excellent user experiences. Developers and testers can ensure that their websites run across various platforms perfectly by comprehending the modulation of various browsers, adhering to best practices, and employing effective testing strategies. 

All these will help developers create websites that are accessible, user-friendly, and resilient, no matter which browser is being used, ultimately leading to improved user satisfaction and improved business outcomes.