Introduction
Cross Browser Testing is a type of functional test to check that your web application works as expected in different browsers.
Cross browser testing is the practice of making sure that the websites and web apps you create work across an acceptable number of web browsers. Different browsers other than the one or two that you use regularly on your devices, including slightly older browsers that some people might still be using, which don’t support all the latest, shiniest CSS and JavaScript features.
Why do we need Cross Browser Testing?
Web-based applications are totally different from Windows applications. A web application can be opened in any browser by the end user. For example, some people prefer to open twitter.com in Chrome browser, while other’s can be using Firefox browser or IE.
In the below diagram, it is showing that in IE, the login box of Twitter is not showing a curve at all corners, but we are able to see it in Chrome browser.
So, we need to ensure that the web application will work as expected in all popular browsers so that more people can access it.
How to Perform Cross Browser Testing?
It can surely be done manually- multiple machines, multiple OSs, Multiple browsers, multiple machines and but clearly, this leads to multiple problems, multiple investments and multiple challenges.
Manual Method:
In the manual method in a different business identifies the browsers that application must support. So, Testers should re-run the same test cases using different browsers and observe the application’s behavior and report the defects.
In this type of testing, it is not possible to cover many browsers and also, the application might not be tested on major browser versions and also performing the cross-browser manually is costly and time-consuming too.
Automated Method:
Cross-browser testing is basically running the same set of test cases multiple times on different browsers. This type of repeated task is best suited for automation. Thus, it’s more cost and time effective to perform this testing by using tools.
Cross-browser testing helps in creating a good impression on the users by providing them a consistent experience throughout the application irrespective of the browser or Operating system. Fixing bugs is cost-effective during the early stages of the development lifecycle, and the same applies to the defects found as a part of this testing too.