A good and consistent user experience is considered a priority in most, if not all, web development projects. If you are creating a website or a web application that serves users, you want the website to be usable, fluid, and performing well, regardless of how it is open. This is why performing cross-browser testing is important. You want to make sure that the website you are developing can deliver the same smooth and pleasant user experience when opened using different browsers.
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Performing cross-browser testing meant installing multiple browsers on your computer and testing the site manually. However, it is not possible to install all the browsers and you can use these tools we are about to discuss to simplify the process. What we need to test can be listed as follows :
- How the website looks on the browsers of different Operating Systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac
- Different browsers with different versions has known troubles such happens with Internet Explorer and Opera more frequently
- HTML character encoding of special characters
- The webpage in different resolutions
- Font specific matters such as size, spacing
- Content alignment
- Any ad unit or div box alignment
- Ajax and JQeury functionality
- CSS validation
- HTML validation with and without Js
Browserstack
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We really cannot talk about cross-browser testing tools without talking about Browserstack. The tool may not offer
all the features you need to run comprehensive tests, but it does come close to being the perfect tool to use.
For starters, you can use simulators, emulators, and even real mobile devices to test your website in different situations. It also offers comprehensive automation tools without requiring additional setup and maintenance. Browserstack also pushes for better integration with other tools used in your development pipeline. It works seamlessly with Slack and Jenkins, plus you can use Browserstack with Selenium and Espresso for better-automated testing.
LambdaTest
LambdaTest is the second tool on our list, and it is famous for its extensive set of features and testing tools. You can test your website on virtually any browser-operating system combination you can think of; in fact, the testing tool offers more than 2,000 of such combinations. The Live Testing features add a degree of interaction to testing your website and web application.
Even top web design agencies like WSI Digital Web are using LambdaTest to make sure that their clients’ websites run smoothly under every condition. They use for local testing, allowing it to carry out all its services in-house efficiently and effectively. Testing using LambdaTest also makes development cycles shorter and more agile.
Sauce Labs
Lastly, we have Sauce Labs, which is one of the oldest testing tools on the market. Being one of the oldest players in the game, Sauce Labs leverages its experience in performing testing over the years and offers a series of tools that pampers web developers to the max. The Selenium-based cloud solution for automating testing under different scenarios is invaluable. You can run complex tests and simulate problems in a more scalable way. The overall UI of Sauce Labs is also very clean, with testing tools just a few clicks away. If there is one downside to using Sauce Labs, it would be its speed. Sauce Labs is not the fastest testing tool on the market. If you can live with the slightly slower VMs for testing, however, this cross-browser testing tool is worth a try.
Conclusion
These are the three of the best cross-browser testing tools to try right now. There are other tools such as BrowserShots, IE Tab, EndTest, IE NetRenderer, Browsera, CrossBrowserTesting.com, Testim to name a few. Each of them is unique for some reason. Considering how important it is to make sure that your site works perfectly on any browser, investing time in one of these three tools we mentioned is beneficial to any web development project you handle.
However, there is no alternative to testing an important website really on different browsers of different devices. The convertible laptops opened a new landscape orientation which is very easy to mess up the elements like the aligned ad units. There are new devices like the smartTV of 4K and 8K resolution, there are tiny devices like the LTE smartwatches. In the end, although we can automate and simplify testing with these tools, it is important to remember to check the website from some other device particularly which are new. It is important not to lose a good visitor.
