People now have various options for accessing a specific thing on the internet which requires to have seamless digital experience. For this, it is important that all the developed software applications are compatible across all browser, version, devices and OS. Here enter cross-browser testing. It is the testing method where software application are tested across different browser and version, device and OS to check its functionality and performance.

Imagine you hired a fantastic group of engineers to produce a world-class web application for you. But how would you define top-notch? You follow the demo exactly on your browser (let’s say Chrome), but that isn’t the end. You do not know who will use which browser to visit your web application. What if it doesn’t function in Safari or Internet Explorer? The buyer will move to another product, so you won’t know. How would you stop that from occurring? How will you keep the client? Testing across browsers is the solution. Let us learn about cross browser testing.

What is Cross Browser Testing?

Texts, photos, videos, and infographics are just a few elements of a website or web application. Cross-browser testing ensures that a website or web application works well in various contexts and browsers.

This testing technique ensures that a website or web app’s text, graphics, videos, etc., all function as they should. Customer experience is the most crucial component of any brand or business. You must confirm that your product passes cross-browser compatibility.

You must make sure that this compatibility largely conforms with the following two requirements:

Operating system and browser

• People use various devices with various operating systems and browsers all around the world. Therefore, you must make sure that your product functions the same in every environment, including Linux, Chrome, Firefox for Windows, Safari for Mac, etc.

Various devices and screen resolutions

• Devices like mobile phones, desktop computers, tablets, etc., come in a variety of sizes and shapes. What functions on a 5-inch screen might not function on a 10-inch screen.

• In a nutshell, cross-browser testing is non-functional testing in which the product (website or web app) is tested in various settings and on different hardware.

You can have a robust and reliable cross-browser tests when performed in cloud-based platform. It allows testing at scale and secure cloud infrastructure. One of those cloud based platform is LambdaTest. It is an intelligent unified digital experience testing cloud where you can perform testing on a large farm of 3000+ browsers (of different versions) installed on different machines & devices (mobiles, tablets, etc.)

It is the ultimate solution for your cross-browser testing needs, ensuring a seamless digital experience for your users. It supports automation test scripts using testing frameworks like Selenium, Cypress and Playwright. Such flexibility allows users to choose the framework that best suits them to perform cross-browser tests and ensure cross-browser compatibility.

Cross-Browser Testing for a Seamless Digital Experience

When the internet began, very few browsers were available. Each of them may be manually tested. However, cross-browser compatibility testing has become even more crucial in the era of heavy internet usage with the emergence of various browsers. The necessity for cross-browser testing is growing because of the endless number of browsers and browser versions.

Code changes may be necessary several times before testing. Fixing defects as soon as testers find them is a good idea. However, even a small modification in the code can impact how a website works on different browsers and versions.

Of course, you can encourage someone to install an alternative browser if they are using a risky browser like Internet Explorer. But do you believe a person will go to all that trouble in today’s fast-paced world only to read your website? Is there a shortage of rivals eager to discover strategies to defeat you? Obviously not!

Testing across browsers has several uses. Let’s look at how it contributes to a seamless digital experience:

More accessible websites attract satisfied customers

Compromised accessibility is the number one killer of consumer satisfaction. The behavior of several properties, like CSS Gradients, CSS Opacity, and others, varies from browser to browser. Such cross-browser incompatible CSS can cause a poor user experience for visually impaired users on your website. They won’t only stop using your web applications; if they choose, they can also post about it on social media.

A website’s own Google search engine rankings may suffer if it is not accessible. Let’s examine how well the CSS mentioned above attributes work across different browsers.

Cross-browser support for CSS Gradients

Have you noticed how incompatible CSS Gradient is across browsers? How can you make it better? You could, however, consult our in-depth blog on the subject. It will assist you in developing fallbacks for browsers that are not supported.

Cross-browser support for CSS Opacity

However, CSS Opacity has been made nearly browser-compatible. Some older browsers are only partially compatible with modern ones.

Cross-Browser Testing Can Aid in Making Your Website Compatible with Smartphones

Gone are the days when desktops or laptops were our only means of accessing information. Thanks to incredible technological progress, we can easily find the information we need with just a few taps on our smartphones. However, unlike iOS devices, Android phones come with various browsers. People can download third-party browsers from the Play Store, like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and more. Hence, if you want your website to be available to everyone regardless of their chosen browser, it must be compatible with these different options.

For instance, a user is using Mozilla Firefox to purchase airline tickets. Great pricing and top-notch onboard amenities are offered. The browser crashes out of nowhere. What will you do as a user out of instinct? Change to a different browser? Actually, no! And even if you switch to a different browser, you can’t simply continue your ticket booking where your normal browser left off in the new browser!

Cross-browser testing can assist you in maximizing your website’s or web application’s performance across several platforms, including desktop, mobile, and tablet. Often, testers believe that their responsive testing has covered this area. However, this is not the case.

Simply said, responsive testing renders your website for the various viewports devices provide. Contrarily, cross-browser testing will assist you in being ready for various mobile operating systems and browsers.

Complete CTA Rendering

A website aims to keep visitors interested while drawing attention to your offerings regarding goods, services, or features. Your website’s Call to Action should be appealing and easy to use to keep users clicking. A special call to action feature‌ would be useless if a user couldn’t access it or use it.

It’s crucial to ensure your CTAs pass comprehensive functional and visual tests in various operating systems and browsers. The nice thing is that functional testing for CTAs is among the simplest processes to automate.

Simple & Reliable Navigation

Google concurs that website navigation is one of the most crucial elements of how your web content is presented to a visitor. Google takes the website’s navigational ease into account when displaying search query results, among other things. How many steps are required for a user to move between pages?

Your website tells a narrative that ends with the user purchasing your goods, completing a form, or reaching their aim. Your navigation represents the story’s plot, and any technical problems would represent plot holes.

The most prevalent problem with mobile browser and cross-browser incompatibility is inconsistent navigation. It is crucial incompatibility with a certain browser or browser version does not derail your well-planned user journey. This makes evaluating your navigation’s cross-browser compatibility an essential step on your QA checklist.

Login Forms that Work with All Browsers

Login forms are crucial for websites to convert visitors into customers. When considering cross-browser compatibility testing, it is important to ensure that login forms work seamlessly across different browsers. Thorough testing on popular browsers is necessary to identify and address any compatibility issues. Adhering to web standards and widely supported technologies helps maintain consistency and reduces the risk of compatibility problems. By prioritizing cross-browser compatibility, businesses can provide a smooth user experience for all visitors, regardless of their chosen browser.

Website templates maintain their integrity across various browsers

Thanks to website builders like WordPress, designing a website without any coding knowledge is now possible. These builders offer generic templates that visitors can customize with their own content. However, it’s important to note that some templates may not be compatible with multiple browsers.

Incompatibilities can arise with custom menus, sliders, toggles, and other features, which may lead to functionality issues on certain browsers. To ensure a smooth user experience, conducting a comprehensive cross-browser compatibility test on your website template is highly recommended.

Variable fonts compatible with browsers

In modern web development, variable fonts are highly encouraged because they offer a wide range of font style variants, including font animations, all from a single font file. However, it’s important to understand how variable fonts function across different browsers. Older versions of major browsers lack sufficient support for them. Notably, some versions of Opera and Internet Explorer (IE) do not support variable fonts.

Cross-browser compatibility allows understanding the nuances of variable fonts and implementing appropriate fallback strategies. You can ensure that your website maintains consistent typography across different browsers, providing an optimal user experience for all visitors.

More Sales Termination

Having a website that tests for cross-browser compatibility is crucial for increasing the conversion rate of your sales staff. If a potential lead is using a browser incompatible with your website, it can negatively impact the credibility of your software application and hinder successful demos. However, with a cross-browser compatible website, your sales team has a higher chance of closing leads as they can confidently present your product on any browser. A smooth user experience across browsers builds trust and enhances sales effectiveness.

Conclusion

A successful application on one browser does not mean it will succeed on other browsers. To ensure their UX remains seamless for the user, developers, and testers should conduct cross-browser testing. It is important to remember that users will switch to rivals if they cannot receive the best user experience across all browsers. If they do, it will benefit your existing customers and the sales team, who will close more deals. Cross-browser testing is, therefore, essential in contemporary web development to guarantee a flawless end-user experience.

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Carakan: The speed race just got a lot more interesting. Opera 10.5 introduces the much anticipated Carakan – Opera’s new JavaScript rendering engine. We did a quick test using the V8 Benchmark. This is what we found:

Opera 10.5 blew away Firefox and outperformed Safari by a fair margin, but Google Chrome still reigned supreme.

HTML5: Opera 10.5 uses an updated rendering engine( Presto 2.5.18). Presto 2.5 introduces a number of new features including support for CSS3 Transitions and HTML5 features like persistent storage.

Vega: Vega is Opera’s graphics library and was previously used only to render SVG. However, in Opera 10.5 all graphics is Opera is rendered using Vega. For now Vega is a highly optimized software rendering engine, but this move definitely does open up the possibility of using hardware acceleration in the future.

Better Platform Integration: As mentioned earlier, Opera 10.5 includes better Windows 7 integration including support for taskbar thumbnails and jump lists. However, there is good news for Mac users also. Opera has finally decided to utilise the Cocoa framework, as a result of which Opera now looks and feels like a native Mac app.

Private Browsing: Opera 10.5 not only introduces Private Browsing but also puts its own spin on it. Unlike in other browsers, you don’t need to open a separate window to enter private browsing mode. Opera supports per-tab private browsing. Whenever you use a private tab, Opera will not keep a record of pages opened in that tab.

Non-modal Dialogue Boxes: Dialogue boxes are no longer in your face. Instead they are displayed as page overlays.

Various UI Improvements: There are minor UI improvements all around. The cache viewer and find have been drastically improved while the address field and search field have been retouched.

Opera 10.5 is available for Windows and Mac users. There are some known issues including high memory usage. This build has major performance issues on older computers and it not recommended unless your processor supports SSE2. And finally, there is no UNIX build this time around.

Update: I went ahead and carried out a few more tests. Opera managed to beat Chrome in both Peacekeeper and Sunspider. So, it appears that Opera is now the fastest browser available.

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Well, it is quite hard to define or probably explain the newly launched social networking site, Google+. When Google+ was announced, everyone thought that it was Facebook’s competitor. Later on, by users’ experience, they claimed that it is more like Twitter where you can share links/images; make official announcements and so on. However, few users say that it works similar to blogging platforms. People like Kevin Rose, found Google+ so interactive that he eventually ditched his blog and redirected his domain to his Google+ profile. Well, now that’s like being more fascinated towards Google+.

Let us compare Google+ with Facebook, Twitter and Blogging platform to see what they have in common.

Google+ vs. Facebook

Right from the profile page to updating posts and to sharing stuff with friends, Google Plus and Facebook have the most common features.

• G+ and Facebook have almost the same Profile Page. The user’s profile picture placed on the upper left-hand corner with friends list below that, is same as Facebook. In addition to that, we have information like Occupation, Education and a brief self-introduction box on the right-had side of the page.
• Facebookers can “like” updates while Google+ users can “+1”. It is pretty much the same feature. Both these buttons are allowed be integrated on third-party sites.
• The status update box on Google+ is a copy of Facebook’s status update box. A picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s the comparison:
• Updating posts in Google+ is similar to updating posts in Facebook. You can share personal thoughts, videos, pictures and even links while your friends can “+1” (“like” on Facebook), comment or share it with others.
• Google+ allows you to categorize your friends with the help of Google+ Circles. This allows you to control what you share with whom. Similarly, Facebook allows you to categorize your friends in Groups, but unlike Circles, Facebook users do not commonly use Facebook Groups.

Google+ vs. Twitter

I have seen people breaking news on Twitter and such announcements/news published on Twitter, spreads like wildfire. Google+ functions in a similar way. We have seen Google employees – Vic Gundotra and Frances Haugen, announcing new features on the site. Not to forget, the CEO himself (Larry Page) posted  Google’s Q2 Earnings report on his stream last night.

Most Indian tweeters, use SMS gateway to update news as quickly as possible. Similarly, Google+ announced SMS support that lets Indian users update their Google+ stream by just sending an SMS. Here’s how to update Google Plus through SMS.

Google+ vs. Blog

Like any blogging platform, Google+ also allows you to share posts with photos, videos and permits users to comment on it. Although blogs allow you to share your posts on Twitter and Facebook, Google+ limits its user to share posts within Google+ only. However, with the use of third-party extensions, you can share Google+ updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

What is New in Google+?

Well, just one thing and that’s “Sparks”. Google+ Sparks allows you to identify or discover topics that might interest you. For instance, let us say that you are interested in Photography. With the help of Sparks, you can keep yourself updated with latest news and topics related to Photography. The results shown are filtered according to the keyword/s you specify. Read more on “Sparks”.

Considering the above points, it is quite hard to define Google+. What I think of Google+ is that it is a mixture of everything. Google+ == Facebook + Twitter + Blog + Some of Google’s unsuccessful services.

Here’s how I think Google+ was born – Google has taken the best of Google Wave, removed some unworthy features from Google Buzz, added few bits and pieces from Orkut, integrated Facebook’s UI, allowed Twitter like functioning and embellished it with photo sharing and video chatting to make it look more like a blog.

Google has really brainstormed on Google+ and have taken into consideration what people really want and how they would like to communicate with their friends and family  members  – You share what you want, how large or small it is and firmly decide whom to share it with.

Well, If you are already on Google+, please let us know what you think of Google+ or how would you define it?

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1. Cloudo

Formerly known as Xindesk, Cloudo is an open internet-based operating system that is written in PHP and runs the LAMP software bundle. It makes full use of the area of the browser and seamlessly integrates with the iPhone’s mobile browser. Written using open technologies, this browser-based OS is high on features and usability. Currently, in Public Beta, it opens to consumers next year.

2. EyeOS

One of the first implementations of the web-based OS that you can run on your own server, EyeOS offers a credible amount of customisation options as long as your web server runs PHP5 and Apache. EyeOS also offers GUI customisation options which means that you can set up an OS the way you and your users want it – highly recommended for those who need to set up their own Web OS.

3. G.ho.st

Short for Global Hosted Operating SysTem, Ghost Inc.’s web-based operating system is built for all those consumers who need to set up an online cloud-computing base without any hassles. The working environment is very similar to most operating systems that users use, and users can add more applications in the near future.

4. Glide OS

TransMedia’s Glide OS is yet another entrant into the competitive world of cloud computing. However, with Intel’s plans of putting Glide into their ultra-mobile PCs, this is one online OS that is not to be trifled with. Packing a host of applications in its basic version, Glide does an admirable job of providing easy cloud computing for its users on both the PC and mobile platforms.

5. Lucid Desktop

Lucid Desktop (formerly known as the Psych Desktop) is built on a base of PHP5 and is a prosumer-oriented web desktop service. This desktop can be installed on to a web server like EyeOS, and is remarkably simple to use and write code for. With its proximity to Linux’s code, Lucid Desktop will be a sure hit with the Linux-loving masses.

6. Online OS

A welcome departure from the masses, Online OS is written in Javascript and uses AJAX for its fast and user-friendly work. The demo desktop looks like the Windows XP desktop (the registered version can be made to look like KDE or Mac OSX) and loads very fast (although there are a few glitches here and there when components fail to load quickly). It has file-management and other abilities, but most of its applications are not part of the OS itself rather, they launch outside of it, making Online OS a sort of a portal to these apps.

7. qWikiOffice

This is one of those few online operating systems that make use of the EXT-JS library for its functioning. Coupled with cutting-edge GUI, qWikiOffice is indistinguishable from an ordinary OS when it works. However, it is still under development and there are no releases as yet.

8. Windows4all

Using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, Windows4all is an online virtual operating system. With a Vista-like GUI and desk bar, this is for all those Windows fanatics who need to use their favourite OS on computers that do not have Windows installed.

9. DesktopTwo

Labelled a Webtop, this cloud OS is one of the premier services offered online, developed by Sapotek. The goal of the developers is to convert the internet into a full fledged platform for working instead of relying on hard-drive based applications. It is a playground for developers as they have released their code under AGPL license.

10. Google Chrome OS

Google’s highly anticipated (slated for release in 2010) cloud computing OS is still largely open to speculation as Google has not released much information since its blog post on the Chrome OS and we have reason to believe that it will be as groundbreaking as its Browser!

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