Getting Started with Browser Compatibility Testing

Nowadays, people are accessing websites on a wide range of browsers, devices, and operating systems. Testing a website or web application on most popular browsers and devices has become an indispensable part of web development. Browser compatibility testing ensures your application works consistently across a range of web browsers.

What is Browser Compatibility Testing?

The term ‘browser compatibility’ in general pertains to the rendering of a page or a website in a particular browser. It is a process that tests the capability of the website, system, or application to run on various browsers (like Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera and Mozilla Firefox), on different resolutions, in different operating systems or with some other applications.

Why Cross-Brower Testing is a Must?

Web browsers are built using diverse tools and technologies. Thus, they render websites and applications differently. It’s important that your website loads properly on all browsers because users these days have very short attention spans - if your site doesn’t work, they will immediately leave it within seconds and possibly never come back. It's unlikely for users to try to use another browser to view your website. What they will probably do instead is to go to a similar website (i.e., your competitors’) that will run efficiently on their favourite browser.

Browser compatibility testing can prevent such issues. As a web developer, you need to make sure that your websites are going to run smoothly and consistently without compromising quality across all kinds of browsers, devices, and platforms. That's how you can provide an excellent user experience.

How to Select Browsers for Cross-Browser Testing?

It is not feasible to build for and test on all combinations of Browser-Operating System that may exist. To maximize your website’s reach to a large audience, select the most popular or commonly used web browsers for testing. Monitor website traffic closely to determine which browser and operating system combinations are being used the most to access your website and spend more time to fix issues on those browsers.

How to Perform Cross-Browser Testing?

The major aim of browser compatibility testing is to provide all users - whatever their preferred browser may be - the same experience. Browser compatibility testing can be done manually. However, this costs a lot of time and money. The good news is that there are automated methods that are more cost-effective. You can use browser compatibility testing tools to perform live interactive multi-browser tests. These tools can give you instant access to analytics and insights of your website performance, helping you identify problems and allowing you to fix them immediately.

Cross-Browser Testing Tools

Browser compatibility testing should be performed to make sure your website works well on all browsers. It’s a challenging task to know if the web application works well on all browser versions. Cross-browser testing tools help in testing your website on multiple browsers. There are many tools available to perform browser compatibility tests including BrowserStack, CrossBrowserTesting, BrowserShots, Browserling, LambdaTest, Experitest, Browsera, just to name a few.

Conclusion:

People around the globe are accessing web pages on mobile devices now more than ever before, so making sure your website or web application compatible with as many browsers as possible on both desktop and mobile platforms basically widens your reach to a larger audience and consequently increases your leads.