A web browser is a bridge that connects internet users with a web application or a website that they wanted to access. The main purpose of a web browser is to render a web application or a website made with text, images/graphics and other aspects that we see. There are a lot of web browsers available across, however only a few most popular such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari.

All the above mentioned web browsers are developed with different technology stack and in a different way, so they are not equal and they have their own unique view. Day by day, web browsers are coming with newer versions with new features for the sake of internet users. So, your web application or website may not look same in all the popular browsers. If a user has used a web browser, on which your website or web application may not look that appealing as it seems in other browsers, then you might lose a potential customer for your business. Therefore, your website or web application that represents your business should be seamless across all browsers, mostly across all popular browsers and browser versions. That’s where you need cross browser testing.

A website or a web application is developed with design elements such as images, content, header and footer, banners and many more, and web elements such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Flash, AJAX and many more. Each browser represents design and web elements in their native way; for example – a design element such as image or banner can have a smaller view in one browser and bigger view in another browser; for example – a web element CSS or JavaScript can behave in one way in one browser and in a different way in another browser.

If you have tested your website or web application on a single browser and think of pushing it forward assuming it will work in the same way on others also, then you are doing incomplete job. Different users will use different web browsers and the website or web applications may vary in appearance from browser to browser. Any kind of compatibility issue will leave the user unhappy and he/she will leave the website or web application with a thought that it is not working properly.

So cross browser testing is all about testing your website or web application on all the targeted web browsers and their versions to verify and validate whether the design and web elements are working how they have to in all the browsers and also to ensure that the end user does not feel dissatisfaction in using your website or web application.

The goal of any type of testing is to find what is wrong in an application and fix it, and improve the application’s user experience which leads to business growth.

Functional testing mostly focuses on testing an application for how it is working in terms of functionality and this process has gap for visual look which is often ignored and it needs to be filled. The goal of cross browser testing is to provide insights on how a website or a web application’s visual look is on multiple browsers to empower functional testing to make the website or web application deliver better user experience.

Testing a website or a web application across multiple browsers is a tedious and time consuming task, which is expensive also as it requires an infrastructure with multiple machines with different operating systems/platforms and different browser & browser versions. So, there are cross browser testing tools available in the market which facilitates the necessary infrastructure required for organizations for cross browser testing.

These cross browser testing tools offer real desktops with real browsers, so you need to test your website or web application’s compatibility across all the targeted web browsers and their versions easily.

ClicBrowse, an off-the-shelf product of ClicTest, allows to render a website or web application across targeted browsers and browser versions on different operating systems and resolutions. Alongside minimizing the testing effort for compatibility testing, ClicBrowse provides better insights on your website or web application compatibility with screenshots and videos.

With its auto-compare feature, ClicBrowse stands out in the competition

ClicBrowse’s auto-compare feature automatically lists Layout Differences, Mismatch Elements and Hidden Elements across browsers and not just that it also highlights by annotating the sections which are different in a target browser when compared to base browser. ClicBrowse’s Auto Compare feature reduces the efforts to compare UI of an application across browsers and browser versions. This feature empowers to make applications’ UI more responsive and give users a better user experience.