72% of organizations feel that quality testing and engineering can make a massive difference in sustainable IT.

It is vital to ensure end-user experiences when it comes to developing web applications. This requires users to thoroughly test new technologies and use the right testing approach. As customers expect quality, it is crucial for developers to make the best web application that can run seamlessly on different devices and browsers. While different testing approaches are available, one of the widely chosen ones is cross-browser testing. It is considered a vital choice for web app development and testing.

However, it can still be a problem to perform cross-browser testing, especially when it is about covering the latest browser versions, operating systems, devices, and legacy browsers. Additionally, the vast test infrastructure required within the organization can become a massive investment for organizations and managing them. This is why cloud cross-browser testing platforms have become increasingly popular, as they can solve issues while helping you test the functionality of web applications seamlessly.

So, here, we will try to find out the different tools used for cross-browser testing, especially for ensuring the performance and quality of web applications.

What is the importance of using cross-browser testing tools?

There is a need for developers and organizations to understand that users are accessing different browsers and operating systems. Hence, it is crucial for every Web application to have the compatibility of working seamlessly in different browser versions. However, the many choices can make it hard for professionals to perform cross-browser testing. 

The following are some of the most common challenges QA professionals face while using cross-browser testing – 

• Since plenty of operating systems and browser combinations are available throughout the market, investing in an in-house infrastructure is not feasible. A critical problem that is mainly faced is updating devices, operating systems, and browsers according to the trends. The timely updation effort becomes expensive and time consuming as you will need to look for the right devices and budget that in ever so often.
• Maintaining and setting up a device farm and in-house browser can be really monotonous and can raise scalability issues. With cross-browser testing infrastructure, manual testing can be a real challenge. Hence ensuring that you integrate various automation tools becomes crucial to accelerate your web testing efforts.
• As web browsers get updates continuously, it is also crucial for the web applications to work accordingly. Some of the most popular web browsers, like Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, receive updates on a frequent basis to improve features and functionalities. It can become a huge problem for testing teams who are restricted to a set timeline and lack the maintenance of browsers in the infrastructure.

Making use of online cross-browser testing tools can become easier to manage compatibility issues with different web browsers. Some of the standard features include testing on different browsers versions, browsers testing on different resolutions, and different operating systems. There are several other cross-browsing tools that provide additional features like recording videos, capturing automated browsers, screenshots, debugging, and a lot more.

Best Testing Tools for Cross-browser Testing

Cross-browser testing is one of the most popular mobile and web application testing processes. Cloud based cross browser testing has become prevalent as it ensures access to different browsers and machines online without the need for many resources. So here, we will take a look at the best cross-browser testing tools available in the market, which you can choose according to your requirements.

Selenium: 

Organizations can enjoy a multitude of advantages by simplifying the infrastructure of Appium and Selenium through the use of Selenium Box. It makes sure to run mobile and automated web testing behind its corporate firewall. It can also be deployed in private clouds besides running on corporate servers. Financial organizations, healthcare providers, and enterprises that need secure requirements mostly use it for data privacy.

Features:

• It ensures scalability that expands according to your requirements.
• It helps provide manual access to different web browsers.
• It can be integrated into the CI/CD environment to meet your needs for continuous testing.
• It is included with maintenance-free browsers, which are already tested for compatibility and functionality.
• It can easily track system usage, get test reports and integrate monitoring tools.

Test Grid: 

Another low-code and no-code platform for test automation is TestGrid. It helps provide a seamlessly performing Web testing tool that is hosted on-premise or on cloud for a real device testing environment. It has both automated and manual testing to ensure faster release cycles.

Features:

• It supports performance testing to optimize websites.
• It helps to test web pages that are hosted privately and locally to ensure bug-free apps.
• It helps to test on different devices.
• It can seamlessly integrate with the mini CI/CD tools.

pCloudy: 

With this platform, professionals can perform both automated and manual cross-browser testing for mobile and web apps. It helps you to test some of the demanding operating systems, devices, and browsers. It is considered one of the most scalable options for organizations when it comes to cross-browser testing tools. It also supports various automation test scripts with a range of testing frameworks like Appium, XCTest, Espresso, Selenium, etc. 

The cloud-based testing platform also gives you the opportunity to perform testing on real browser environments. Therefore, it becomes helpful for testing mobile and web apps on a wide range of platforms and browsers.

Features: 

• Real device cloud ensures real-time testing.
• It can seamlessly run the automation tests in different frameworks and languages.
• Visual regression testing helps to keep an eye on visual deviations.
• Enables geolocation testing for mobile and Web apps in more than 50 geographies.
• It can efficiently perform local host testing for mobile and web applications.

Conclusion: Due to the different benefits of utilizing cross-browser testing tools, it has become imperative for professionals to leverage these tools to efficiently manage their testing efforts. Choosing a cloud-based app testing tool makes it a feasible and cost-effective solution because they have an easy user interface and can be accessed from everywhere. Besides, it lets you automate various testing bits that make it faster and more reliable. As cross-browser testing has become necessary for mobile and web application processes, it is one of the most commonly used technologies among organizations that want to improve quality and performance.

While there are several tools available to ensure making cross-browser testing seamless, these are the top three best options that we can recommend to improve the testing environment and provide budget-friendly options. These tools keep evolving and provide better browser compatibility.