If you think that your website will work on any browser available in the market, then definitely you are not at a very right track. The biggest challenge faced by brands is that their websites or mobile apps should work on all the browsers available in the target market. They are focusing on developing applications which are multi-platform support. By multi-platform support app we mean an application which can withstand a gamut of variations like device browser combinations, device – os combinations, browser -os combination etc, screen size etc. The device – fragmentation issues can be curbed by cross browser testing. As per the stats, more than 5 lakh websites are created per day, these enormous numbers speak volumes on how challenging is cross browser testing. As per a famous saying , “half of the problems are solved by just facing them” . So let’s discuss the most critical challenges faced during cross browser testing.
Multiple Browsers, Their Versions and OS Combinations
When it comes to websites, every brand develops a website focused on their user base requirements and target market. Hence if you have created a website and tested its compatibility against a handful of popular browsers and think that it will work everywhere as HTML and CSS is standardized then, certainly you are on the wrong track. The browser and its versions , the OS and its versions, all these combinations multiply and make testing difficult to crack. For example , if your team decides to work on popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari on OS like windows, linux, mac-os then the combinations would look like this
- Windows: 5 browsers
- macOS: 4 browsers (here are tips to make Internet Explorer work on Mac)
- Linux: 3 browsers
But if you consider the latest updated versions of these browsers and OS then the combination would look like this
- Windows 8.1: 5 browsers
- Windows 10: 5 browsers
- macOS High Sierra: 4 browsers
- OS X EI Capitan: 4 browsers
- OS X macOS Sierra: 4 browsers
- Ubuntu 17.10: 3 browsers
- Ubuntu 17.04: 3 browsers
- Ubuntu 18.04: 3 browsers
Hence with the updated os versions and multiple number of browsers make the cross browser testing much much more difficult as it looks.
2. Continuous Browser Updates
Nowadays, brands keep on updating their browsers for various reasons like fulfilling their customer’s requirements, staying ahead of their competitors etc. The automatic browser updates have made it difficult for the testing teams to keep up with the cross browser testing. For example, chrome updates its browser every eight weeks and the users do not even realise the change. Hence one of the biggest challenge in cross browser testing is to deal with the frequently updating browsers.
3. Automation is Not That Easy as it Seems
When it comes to automating cross browser testing, most of the testers are under the impression that it is all about testing early, test often, take short cuts, rinse and repeat. But it’s not that simple. Most of the testing team use Selenium webdriver and TestNG framework for cross browser testing but that’s not all.
For successfully automating cross browser testing, first of all you need a robust testing platform availing parallel testing. In Cross browser testing, parallel testing is crucial. You need to set up an environment which gels well with parallel testing. Scalability is another key for successfully automating cross browser testing as we can easily add or remove the required number of devices easily in a highly scalable environment.
Conclusion
Owing to the dynamics of the application industry, we need to face a lot of challenges in terms of browser and os updation which has a direct impact on the compatibility of the applications with the devices, hence cross browser testing plays a vital role in application development. But inorder to combat the challenges faced during cross browser testing we require some key essentials like parallel testing and scalability to make testing seamless. pCloudy is a cloud based platform which makes cross browser testing seamless as it can robust parallel testing set up and is highly scalable. Apart from this it has more than 5000 device browser combinations which provides compatibility with a large set of mobile devices available in the target market. So pCloudy is highly recommended for cross browser testing.