Learn why cross-browser testing is so important and an approach you can take to make cross-browser testing with Selenium much faster.
What is Cross Browser Testing?
Cross-browser testing is a form of functional testing in which an application is tested on multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, IE, etc.) to validate that functionality performs as expected.
In other words, it is designed to answer the question: Does your app work the way it’s supposed to on every browser your customers use?
Why is Cross Browser Testing Important?
While modern browsers generally conform to key web standards today, important problems remain. Differences in interpretations of web standards, varying support for new CSS or other design features, and rendering discrepancies between the different browsers can all yield a user experience that is different from one browser to the next.
A modern application needs to perform as expected across all major browsers. Not only is this a baseline user expectation these days, but it is critical to delivering a positive user experience and a successful app.
At the same time, the number of screen combinations (between screen sizes, devices and versions) is rising quickly. In recent years the number of screens required to test has exploded, rising to an industry average of 81,480 screens and reaching 681,296 for the top 30% of companies.
Ensuring complete coverage of each screen on every browser is a common challenge. Effective and fast cross-browser testing can help alleviate the bottleneck from all these screens that require testing.
How to Perform Modern Cross Browser Testing in Selenium with Visual Testing
Traditional approaches to cross-browser testing in Selenium have existed for a while, and while they still work, they have not scaled well to handle the challenge of complex modern applications. They can be time-consuming to build, slow to execute and challenging to maintain in the face of apps that change frequently.
Applitools Developer Advocate and Test Automation University Director Andrew Knight (AKA Pandy Knight) recently conducted a hands-on workshop where he explored the history of cross-browser testing, its evolution over time and the pros and cons of different approaches.
Andrew then explores a modern cross-browser testing solution with Selenium and Applitools. He walks you through a live demo (which you can replicate yourself by following his shared Github repo) and explains the benefits and how to get started. He also covers how you can accelerate test automation with integration into CI/CD to achieve Continuous Testing.
Check out the workshop below, and follow along with the Github repo here.
More on Cross Browser Testing in Cypress, Playwright or Storybook
At Applitools we are dedicated to making software testing faster and easier so that testers can be more effective and apps can be visually perfect. That’s why we use our industry-leading Visual AI and built the Applitools Ultrafast Grid, a key component of the Applitools Test Cloud that enables ultrafast cross-browser testing. If you’re looking to do cross-browser testing better but don’t use Selenium, be sure to check out these links too for more info on how we can help:
- Testing Storybook Components in Any Browser – Without Writing Any New Tests!
- Running Lightning-Fast Cross-Browser Playwright Tests Against any Browser
- How to Run Cross Browser Tests with Cypress on All Browsers (and follow-up Q&A)
- Learn More about How to Use Applitools for Cross-Browser Testing
