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Nowadays it is crucial to test websites in different browsers to improve the user experience. In many cases, it is noticed that someone has a favorite browser and the possibility that they are always using it to work on the website. If the website is only viewed in any specific browser it will load just fine and work properly and when users switch to another browser surprisingly the differences will be huge.
Different browsers interpret information differently, some may lack the features the website is attempting to display, causing the website to appear damaged in that browser, making it believe that the website is ruined and giving a wrong impression to the users. Fortunately, this problem can be avoided by testing the website in various browsers since this is such a vital task, there are plenty of resources that will help to get started.
This article will explain why it is essential to test the website in different browsers using Selenium Grid. While discussing that we will first look at what testing websites in different browsers means and why it is required. So without any delay let’s get started.
Multi browser-testing
Testing websites on different browsers can also be termed multi-browser testing. helps to ensure that the websites and web applications are designed in a way that is compatible with a sufficient number of web browsers and works for all of the users, regardless of browser, device, or further assistive tools they are using.
Several components such as content, images, CSS, and scripts are included in a website, each browser will uniquely handle all of this. For example, CSS can act differently in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome which indicates that the same element may appear differently in various Web browsers.
The website browser testing job is to ensure that these components are working properly across all browser versions and detect bugs on time that may prevent a site from accurately displaying or functioning across browsers.
Additionally, It also ensures that HTML, JavaScript, plugins, and design components are behaving and looking as intended across various browsers
Why it is required to test the website in different browser
Below are some key reasons for testing the website on different web browsers.
Browser Compatibility: There are various versions of operating systems, and different web browsers have varying degrees of support for web technologies and standards. Due to this data may be interpreted in different ways, and some content of a website may be represented inappropriately, which shows a wrong impression of the website and results in user disappointment. Testing in different browsers ensures that the website functions and displays correctly across a range of browsers.
There are a lot of different browser compatibility testing tools that testers can use to check their website compatibility in different browsers, each of them has its unique techniques and features, supported browser versions, platforms, and various methods to debug any issues. LambdaTest is one of the cross-browser compatibility automation testing platforms where testers can simply perform website testing on different browsers.
Using this platform testers perform Selenium testing to ensure end-to-end functionality, compatibility, and performance. Using Selenium Grid on LambdaTest testers can also conduct tests across different browsers, operating systems combinations, and real devices. This approach allows to validate the compatibility of the application with different browser operating system combinations to ensure a seamless user experience for a diverse audience
LambdaTest is a cloud-based AI-powered test execution platform that allows running manual and automated tests at scale. It also offers an online Selenium Grid of more than 3000 environments and real mobile devices to perform testing in parallel both in real-time and automated, helping save time, effort, and cost
Consistent User Experience: Users gain access to websites on a variety of devices and browsers Different browsers have different rendering engines, which somehow cause variations in the website or web application’s display and behavior. If the website only works well in a particular browser, there is a risk of providing a poor experience for a particular portion of the audience. Cross-browser testing helps ensure a consistent, high-quality user experience regardless of the browser they are using.
Market Share: The most popular browsers (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) have significant market share. However, a website or web application that works perfectly on one browser may often not work properly on another browser. Neglecting to test on various popular leading browsers could exclude a large segment of potential visitors. Hence, testing ensures that the website or web application is accessible to the largest possible audience.
Future-Proofing: Modern web standards are consistently not implemented across all browsers. Rendering engines and support for web technologies may change when new browser versions are released. Ongoing testing in different browsers helps grab issues early and keep the site working well over time.
Detecting bugs and errors: Different browsers can read HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in various ways, there is a risk of having bugs and errors that are specific to a particular browser. Testing in various browsers will help identify them and allow us to fix these issues before they become major problems.
Brand reputation: The brand’s reputation might hurt and will drive the potential users away if the website or web application performs erratically. If the website is being tested on different browsers will help to ensure that the website or web application is professional and reliable.
Scalability: It is mandated to see how the website appears on real devices before the website or the mobile application is launched and updated. Performing testing in various browsers makes it possible to test the website in the exact conditions before being alive.
Understanding Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid is a strong component of the Selenium suite widely used for automating browser testing. It aimed at providing the easiest and simplest way to perform automated tests across various physical or virtual machines. This kind of automation testing is also known as distributed test execution.
QA and testers used Selenium Grid in automation testing due to various reasons:
- Automated tests can be executed parallely on multiple browsers and their versions as well as operating systems.
- Selenium Grid ensures that the application is compatible with numerous browser/OS variants that help in reducing the overall testing time.
- Selenium grid provides cross-platform testing, scaling, and load balancing, which ensures faster and smoother automated testing, making it easy to analyze and compare the results.
- Load balancing capabilities provided by Selenium Grid allow for distributing the test execution evenly across different nodes.
- Selenium Grid helps save an ample amount of time, particularly on large or long-running test suites that can take hours to run and perform validation on large amounts of data.
Benefits of Selenium Grid
Efficient test coverage: Using Selenium Grid helps execute tests across various configurations, including multiple browsers, operating systems, and versions. This approach identifies potential issues across various environments and configurations and ensures a comprehensive test coverage
Improved resource utilization: When test execution is distributed across multiple nodes, Selenium Grid optimizes resource utilization to increase the efficiency of its testing infrastructure. This distributed approach helps in reducing any blockages and provides smooth test execution, even during peak load periods.
Consistent User Experience: Selenium Grid facilitates the process while testing a website in different browsers where developers can evaluate application compatibility across various browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Edge etc. This procedure of comprehensive testing provides a consistent user experience, irrespective of the browser or platform they are using.
Browser Compatibility: Selenium Grid provides authority to testers in identifying browser-specific issues and helps in rectifying them, thus ensuring optimal functionality across all supported browsers. QA teams can enhance the application compatibility by leveraging Selenium Grid’s cross-browser testing capabilities, and provide a seamless user experience across various platforms.
Lower infrastructure Expenses: The distributed testing capabilities of Selenium Grid allow testing teams to reduce their testing infrastructure by lowering hardware and maintenance costs associated with maintaining the test environments. This cost-effective method enables testers and developers to acquire their testing objectives without spending excessive costs.
Quick Time-to-Market: Selenium Grid empowers organizations to accelerate the application development cycle by expediting test execution timing and enhancing test coverage, which further facilitates faster time-to-market. This competitive benefit allows testers to take advantage of market opportunities and gain an ambitious edge in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Prompt Test Cycles: Selenium Grid encourages test execution parallelly, which allows testers and developers to execute multiple test cases simultaneously across different browsers. The capability of parallel execution expedites test cycles and empowers them to accelerate the release cycles and deliver the best-quality applications within specified timelines.
Improved Productivity: Testers can enhance test productivity and optimize resource utilization by leveraging Selenium Grid’s parallel execution capabilities. This comprehensive testing approach will help reduce idle time to perform constant test execution and allow them to achieve their testing goals with the highest accuracy and efficiency.
Points to consider while testing the website in different browsers using Selenium Grid
As discussed, Selenium is one of the most popular automated testing tools for various functions and one of the many features supported by Selenium is Cross-browser testing.
Choose browser-specific Drivers: Testers need to download and set up the proper WebDriver for each browser, for example, ChromeDriver for Chrome, and GeckoDriver for Firefox. Whenever required, the correct version of the driver that matches the browser version needs to be updated accordingly to avoid any inconvenience during the test.
Control synchronization: Synchronization issues often arise in the tests as different browsers may have varying rendering speeds, Using explicit waits will help ensure that elements are present early before interacting with them.
Analyze browser’s OS configuration: To perform effective multi-browser testing with Selenium, it is a must to know the required operating system and desired browser versions. It always recommends prioritizing the combinations that are used by the largest segments of the audience.
Optimized for Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer does not support advanced CSS styles and frameworks, Its limited CSS support can cause layout issues. distort design elements. It can be addressed with a dedicated IE stylesheet and adding some hacks to the doctype to ensure a seamless experience for all users.
Run tests on multiple browsers: Perform testing on various browsers is essential, such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and others, to cover a wide range of user devices and preferences.
Employ relevant JavaScript libraries: It is essential to use the appropriate JavaScript resources that fulfill site needs because JavaScript is a crucial component of web and app development. Choosing appropriate tools that work best for the site and team will save time and effort on the test drive. This approach provides consistent browser compatibility.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, comprehensive testing in different browsers is a crucial part of the web development process which ensures that the users of the website have a consistent experience, regardless of their browser choice. Testing the website across multiple browsers using Selenium Grid empowers robust capabilities, and helps testers to achieve faster test execution, improved test coverage, and cost-effective test automation solutions.
In addition, it enhances the user experience and helps in growing the audience thus providing a solid user experience. Testing websites in different browsers using Selenium Grid helps to promote a positive reputation and it can improve user satisfaction when they can easily view content and experience optimized functionality regardless of browser, device, or operating system they use.
