5 Best Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing Tools

In the past two decades, there has been a tremendous increase in the web. There were about 2.4 million websites in 1998 and now there are approximately 1.8 billion. More devices result in more users, more platforms, and more browsers, and eventually more ways in which your website can be viewed.

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Each browser gives support for an exceptional blend of web technologies, but along with it, there are drawbacks. Not all technologies are supported by all web browsers. Seamless user experience on one browser does not guarantee the same experience on other web browsers.

Hence, it becomes extremely crucial that you test your website’s performance on all browsers. This is where cross-browser tests come into play.

If your website is not cross-browser compatible, your competitors will beat you out.

• 45% will be uncertain to visit your website again or they may never visit in the future.
• 32% of the users find your website problematic in one way or another are less likely to pay you for your service.
• 35% of them will make a negative perception of your company.
• 21-22% of users will leave for good.

What Do We Need to Test?

A few factors that need to be tested while performing cross-browser testing are:

1. HTML or XHTML validation
2. CSS validation
3. All images and alignment and Font size validation
4. Page validations without and with JavaScript enabled
5. Ajax and JQeury functionality
6. Page styles in multiple resolutions
7. Footer and header sections
8. Special characters with HTML character encoding
9. Special characters with HTML character encoding
10. Date formats
11. Page zoom-out and zoom-in functionality

Knowing these factors, it is clear why it is feasible to pick out the best cross-browser testing tool.

Top 5 Cross-Browser Testing Tools

To ensure that your websites will work for as many users as possible, here is the list of top 5 Cross-Browser Testing tools:

1. BrowserStack

• BrowserStack tests with real browsers on real machines that allow both software testers and developers to test websites and mobile apps.
• It is cloud-based, so it doesn’t necessitate any installation. The pre-installed developer tools are helpful for quick debugging and cross-browser tests.
• With this, you can conduct live testing and automated test on mobile devices and web-browsers. It supports opera mobile, Windows (XP, 7 and 8), Android, lion and mountain lion, iOS, OSX snow leopard, etc.
• Another feature is the native experience, where you can enjoy tests through the browsers with the help of DevTools.

2. Sauce Labs

• Sauce Labs is a prime cloud-based, all-in-one framework to test your sites and mobile apps across all major devices and browsers.
• Another trait that stands it out from the crowd is that it does not require any VM set up or maintenance for running the test cases.
• SauceLabs usually focuses on continuous tests to get instant feedback on your changes throughout the development process.
• It offers you scalability, wide test coverage, and years of experience to accelerate the software test life cycle and decrease your build times.

3. CrossBrowser Testing

• The cross-browser testing tool provides interactive browser compatibility tests over mobile and desktop browsers. It is also available for multiple OS.
• It is a famous commercial cross-browser testing tool. It supports over 1000 amalgamation of different Operating Systems and browsers including mobile browsers.
• Their main trait comprises live tests (manual testing), visual testing (screenshots) and automated testing. This makes a great platform for designers, QA, and developers, to collaborate on test projects.
• Cross-browser testing has automated screenshot features, localhost support, and test behind logins among others.

4. Browsershots

• Browsershots is an open-source testing platform. It allows you to test sites in any browser and OS. This is an extensively used software testing tool because of its features and accessible customizations.
• One can easily run cross-browser compatibility testing with great customization choices like browser type, screen size, operating system, JavaScript status, color depth, and Flash enable or disable settings.
• This free browser test tool allows you to take site screen-shots in approximately 61 browsers and several operating systems.
• Supported browsers: Firefox, IE, Google Chrome, Minefield, Opera, Netscape, Safari, etc. with almost all versions.

5. LambdaTest

• LambdaTest is a cloud-based powerful cross-browser testing platform that allows you to carry out cross-browser compatibility tests of your web app or websites.
• This tool allows you to test your website across a huge list of web-browsers and their respective versions. The specialty of this tool is that it provides both automated and manual cross-browser tests for your web app.
• LambdaTest tool is genuinely faster than the rest, especially with desktops, and they seem to concentrate more on customer satisfaction as their reaction to user problems is truly fast. It has clean UI and provides simple to use testing experience.
• Supported devices are Android, Windows, Mac, iPhone/ iPad, and Web-based.

Choosing a good cross-browser test tool often depends on your needs, as each of these browser compatibility checking tools come with their own traits.

Further Reading

Top Tips for Better Cross-Browser Testing

Top 5 Cross-Browser Testing Tools

14 Ways In Which Cross-Browser Testing Ensures a Better UX