Cross browser testing is an essential part of web application development and maintenance. It helps ensure that the web application functions as expected, regardless of the browser or device used to access it.Â
Using Selenium with JavaScript can help you create automated test scripts for cross browser testing, which improves the efficiency and reliability of testing workflows. It also ensures that your web application works correctly across different browsers and operating systems, which can enhance the user experience and accessibility of your application.
What is Cross Browser Testing?
Cross-browser testing is a form of functional testing that aims to verify the compatibility of web applications and websites with different browsers. This process is crucial as it ensures that these digital products function correctly across various browsers, making them accessible to a wider audience regardless of their device, operating system, or screen resolution.
One of the primary goals of cross-browser testing is to identify and address any differences that exist between browsers, such as variations in image orientation, user input positioning and validation, JavaScript implementation, font size, and page alignment. Additionally, certain browsers may not be compatible with specific operating systems, which can also impact a web application’s functionality.
While cloud-based cross-browser testing platforms exist, starting cross-browser testing can be challenging and expensive, given the need to test across numerous browsers, operating systems, and device combinations. Nevertheless, software testers can use tools like Selenium and Python to create an internal testing grid that enables them to perform cross-browser testing efficiently.
Why is Cross Browser Testing Necessary?
Websites are built using three primary technologies: HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. While different back-end technologies like Python and Ruby may be used, only these three front-end technologies are utilized in rendering a website. However, each browser uses a unique rendering engine, such as Blink for Chrome, Gecko for Firefox, and Edge HTML and Chakra for IE. As a result, the same website can be rendered differently on different browsers. This is why cross-browser testing is crucial to ensuring that a website works correctly on all browsers and operating systems.
Here are some reasons that illustrate the importance of cross-browser testing:
- Ensuring browser compatibility across different operating systems.
- Addressing issues with image orientation.
- Addressing issues caused by varying JavaScript orientations in different browsers.
- Ensuring proper rendering and sizing of fonts.
- Ensuring compatibility with new web frameworks.
What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source software tool that allows automated cross-browser testing, free of charge. Its purpose is to verify the compatibility of web applications and websites across a range of platforms and browsers. Using Selenium, you can generate test scripts with a unified interface and programming languages like Java, Node.js, C#, or Python.
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a flexible and powerful programming language that is widely utilized for creating interactive and dynamic websites. A JavaScript framework refers to a pre-built library that comes with a collection of functions and tools to construct front-end or full-stack web applications. The fundamental objective of frameworks is to streamline the development and management of intricate web applications by offering a basis for organizing and constructing code and handling mundane tasks.
Selenium with JavaScript
Selenium WebDriver 4 has made significant improvements to its support for modern web standards and technologies, such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. This enables developers to write automated tests more easily and efficiently for web applications that use these technologies. With the rise of web technologies, such as Single Page Applications (SPAs) and Web Components, Selenium WebDriver 4’s improved support is a crucial feature that ensures compatibility with these modern applications.
Another notable feature of Selenium WebDriver 4 is its new architecture, which supports parallel testing and cross-platform execution. This means that multiple test cases can run simultaneously across multiple platforms, allowing for faster and more efficient testing. Large organizations can greatly benefit from this feature as it can help to save time and resources.
With parallel testing, test cases can be executed in a distributed manner, allowing multiple tests to be run simultaneously. This feature helps reduce the overall test execution time and allows for faster feedback. Cross-platform execution enables tests to be run on multiple platforms, such as Windows, Mac, and Linux, providing comprehensive coverage of the application on different environments.
What Are the Benefits of Using Selenium for Cross Browser Testing?
Selenium is a popular framework utilized for automated cross-browser testing. By automating web application tests through Selenium, developers can ensure that web apps work seamlessly across various operating systems and browser configurations, ensuring a consistent user experience across platforms. When using Selenium for cross-browser testing, you can automate your tests and take advantage of a wide range of tools and possibilities. It is also highly adaptable, enabling the simulation of multiple test scenarios and use cases.
Selenium is a favorable choice for cross-browser testing due to its software suite, offering various options such as:
- Selenium WebDriver, which provides browser-operating bindings for various languages, enabling the declaration and application of multiple methods for end-to-end testing.
- Selenium IDE, which is an add-on that allows recording and replaying of script interactions with browsers, simplifying the process.
- Selenium Grid, which is a suite of software programs designed to run several test cases concurrently on multiple browsers, operating systems, and hardware, facilitating and scaling up testing for larger test suites.
Selenium with JavaScript has several benefits for web application testing. Here are some of them:
- Easy to learn: JavaScript is a widely used language, and many developers are already familiar with it. This makes it easy to get started with Selenium testing using JavaScript as the programming language.
- Cross-platform support: JavaScript is a cross-platform language, and Selenium can be used with JavaScript to test web applications across multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- Large community support: JavaScript has a large community of developers, and there are many resources available online to help with Selenium testing using JavaScript. This includes documentation, tutorials, and forums where developers can ask questions and get help.
- Integration with other tools: JavaScript integrates easily with other tools and frameworks, making it easy to incorporate Selenium tests into your development workflow. For example, you can use Selenium with JavaScript in combination with popular testing frameworks like Mocha, Jest, or Cypress.
- Automated testing: Selenium with JavaScript allows for comprehensive automated testing of web applications, including cross-browser testing. This can save a lot of time and effort compared to manual testing.
- Open-source: Selenium with JavaScript is an open-source tool, meaning that it is free to use and can be customized to fit specific testing needs.
Overall, Selenium with JavaScript is a powerful and versatile tool for web application testing, and it offers several benefits for developers and organizations looking to improve their testing processes.
Automated vs. Manual Cross Browser Testing with Selenium: Which is Better?
When beginning cross-browser testing, it’s important to determine the extent to which the process will be automated or performed manually. Manual cross-browser testing involves human testers examining websites and mobile applications without the assistance of automated tools or scripts. This allows testers to assess aspects of the software that automated scripts may overlook, such as design, usability, and the overall user experience. However, manual testing can be time-consuming due to the amount of manual labor involved.
On the other hand, automated cross-browser testing using tools like Selenium is faster and more efficient, as test scripts are automatically created and executed, with results compared to expected outcomes. This enables teams to deliver code more quickly and shorten their release cycles.
LambdaTest is a digital experience testing cloud that enables developers and QA to test their websites and mobile apps for cross browser compatibility. The platform provides the scalable cloud infrastructure to instantly test websites and apps across a range of real mobile devices and browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, IE, Edge, Firefox, and more.Â
LambdaTest offers a secure, scalable, and dependable cloud-based Selenium grid for running Selenium automation tests. Users can also perform cross browser testing of their publicly or locally hosted websites and web applications on the cloud.
How to use Selenium to automate tests?
To automate tests using Selenium, the first step is to identify which test cases require automation. This involves reviewing the application requirements and identifying areas that can benefit from automated testing.
Next, you need to design the automation framework’s structure, which involves selecting the tools and technologies to use, such as the programming language, test runner, and assertion library. Additionally, you need to determine the overall framework architecture, such as whether to use the page object model or data-driven testing.
After designing the framework, the next step is to implement the test cases by writing code to interact with the web application and ensure it functions as intended. Once the test cases are implemented, they can be executed using the framework. This involves running a test runner that executes the tests and provides results.
Finally, it is necessary to maintain the framework and test cases over time. This includes updating the test cases as the application changes and keeping the framework and its dependencies up-to-date.
Conclusion
Cross-browser testing enables you to ensure website compatibility, and Selenium is an automated testing tool that serves this purpose. Developers are responsible for delivering a consistently delightful end-user experience across multiple browsers and devices.