Websites are online shops for all brands across the world. In order to outdo their competitors, brands have to make sure that their websites are functioning well. Hence website development has tremendously evolved over the years, and so have the browsers. One of the greatest challenges in web application testing is dealing with a number of browsers, their versions, and the devices supporting these browsers. It is a complicated business and efficient automated cross-browser testing is the ultimate solution. In this blog, we will have an overview of cross-browser testing and discuss the various benefits of automated cross-browser testing.

What is Cross Browser Testing ?

In Cross Browser testing, an application is tested across multiple browsers to ensure compatibility. Nowadays, a number of browsers and their versions, os, and their versions and devices and their versions have been released.  For cross compatibility, the web application under development has to be tested across various browsers and its versions, os and its version, and devices and its versions. Hence cross-browser testing is performed to test the web applications across various combinations of browsers, os, and devices to ensure that the web application is performing as intended across all such combinations.  

Now let’s have a look at the benefits of automation cross browser testing 

Simultaneous execution of test cases will enable the test to run faster 

Automated cross-browser testing is running the test parallel across different devices and browser combinations. Parallel testing increases the speed of testing by multiple folds. For parallel testing, a cloud platform would be ideal to avoid the complications associated with hardware and networking for the physical lab. Also, a lot of teams of testers can use the platform from anywhere and at any time. There are a number of test automation tools to perform cross-browser testing like Appium, selenium web driver, Robotium, etc. 

Scalability and flexibility is the key to successful cross-browser testing 

As we know that for successful cross-browser testing, we need to test the devices with the latest version. Hence we require a scalable platform where we can add or even reduce the number of devices as per the project requirements. Scalability is easy to achieve in a cloud-based platform where adding or removing the devices is just a matter of a few clicks. This will aid in efficient cross-browser testing.

Higher test coverage 

One of the greatest challenges with cross-browser testing is to test across the combinations of several browsers, os, and devices. This combination gives rise to a large number of devices to be tested together. For example, if you have to run 30 mins long test across a combination of 15 different browser combinations and you have only 4 hours to complete the testing and automation testing is the best remedy. Hence automation gives higher test coverage. 

More accurate test results 

It is difficult to achieve efficiency in cross-browser testing done manually. The combination of parallel testing and automation testing gives a boost to the speed of testing. Automation testing avoids human errors and provides efficient results.

Save time and Money 

With cross-browser automation testing, we are able to find the bugs from the earlier stages, otherwise, in the later stages, it is difficult to detect and report bugs. 

Also, cross-browser testing has a mundane, repetitive task and time-consuming task if done manually, by identifying and automating all the common test cases that need to be repeated, you can save time and improve ROI

Conclusion 

Automated cross-browser testing can be best achieved in a cloud-based platform where parallel testing and scalability can be achieved easily. pCloudy is a continuous testing platform for mobile and web application testing. It has an independent cloud called the browser cloud, for performing cross-browser testing. It has multiple device browser combinations and test automation integrated tools that help to get efficient and automated cross-browser testing. Also being a cloud platform, it can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. Hence pCloudy is highly recommended and the best cross-browser testing platform.