Web applications are getting more and more advanced to work on all devices. We all use different browser engines on our phones, tablets, and desktop computers. Web developers nowadays therefore need to deliver high-quality apps more quickly and also make sure that their applications function properly on a variety of browsers and devices. They are under extreme pressure as a result of the rising speed and targets. One approach to accomplish this goal is to go through the automating testing process.
When creating web applications, automated testing is crucial for ensuring the quality of the delivered code and for identifying bugs as soon as possible to reduce the expense of resolving them. Playright is one of the many top-notch web test automation solutions that are widely accessible nowadays. The development of scalable, reliable, and faster test automation is made possible by playwright testing. Cross-browser testing can also be streamlined using Playwright.
Using Playwright, testers can easily automate the process of testing their web-based applications across a variety of browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and others, while also delivering a consistent user experience.
In this article, we will talk about Playwright testing for efficient cross-browser testing. To begin, let’s define and explain what cross-browser testing is. The capabilities of Playwright testing will next be briefly discussed as they contribute to improving the quality of web apps when various devices are being targeted. Finally, we’ll look at the benefits of using this automated framework for cross-browser testing. So let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Cross-browser testing
Testing against all popular browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and all of their iterations is necessary to provide a high-quality application. However, it is challenging to predict which browser users will use to view the website due to the range of devices and the various versions of those. Cross-browser testing can help with that.
Cross-browser testing is the process of ensuring that websites and web apps are accessible and function as intended across a wide range of web browsers, operating systems, and device combinations.
Even though all web browsers comply with the HTML and CSS common web standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), each browser has its unique way of rendering code. Several factors, such as the following, may contribute to the discrepancy between appearance and function.
- Variations in the operating system or browser default settings.
- Modifications in settings that are defined by the user, including screen resolution.
- Differences in hardware performance may result in variations in screen resolution or color balancing.
- Variations in the engines that handle the web instructions.
- Differences in client version compatibility for current web standards, such as CSS3.
- The usage of assistive technologies like screen readers.
Testers can identify browser-specific compatibility errors and immediately fix them by analyzing and testing this method.
The need for cross-browser testing
No matter what browser, device, or additional assistive technologies users choose to access the app on, providing a consistent user experience across browsers and browser versions ensures an excellent UX.
Users will quickly go to find an alternative if they see a website that takes a long time to load or has any other errors. In these cases, users will think that the website is inadequate or has an issue. Cross-browser testing is essential for any mobile application since it offers a stable and consistent user experience and confirms that the web app functions properly across all popular browsers, allowing it to retain users and keep them happy. Cross-browser testing guarantees:
- The user experience is the same across all browsers and platforms.
- Problems with browsers are identified early in their life cycles and fixed.
- Even with the introduction of new devices and operating system combinations, the website or web application retains its performance.
- Browser-specific features do not affect the user’s experience.
- Every browser reacts to modifications in functionality or features in an acceptable way.
- Users can access a responsive design on a variety of devices and operating systems.
Now that we are more familiar with cross-browser testing in general, automating cross-browser testing is crucial for most organizations that want their application to run consistently on all supported devices. Therefore, based on the demands and objectives of the team, choosing the right cross-browser testing solution is essential.
Playwright is one of the most well-liked cross-browser testing tools. The tool’s advanced features enable test teams to successfully conduct tests following their unique requirements. Before we talk about Playwright’s features, let’s define what it is.
Playwright
Microsoft created the Playwright open-source test framework. It is a Node.js framework that provides cross-browser web automation testing. By allowing users to utilize a single API, it makes it simple to test a website across numerous browsers and viewport sizes. Testing professionals can guarantee a consistent user experience and identify any problems early in the development process by automating the testing process and utilizing Playwright’s features.
It is quickly becoming more popular because of its clear syntax, quick execution, and extensive capabilities. Tests remain protected from flakiness by features like automatic waiting and carefully designed assertions. Playwright also offers bindings for TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, C#, Python,.NET, and Java.
Playwright’s cross-browser testing capabilities allow for the exploration of more advanced capabilities like generating images, videos, network interceptions, and integration with testing frameworks like Jest or Mocha for a more comprehensive testing suite.
Key features of Playwright
To meet the demands faced by modern agile teams, the Playwright framework was developed recently. Let’s look at a few of the Playwright’s unique features below.
Auto-Waits- Playwright performs different actionability checks for web page elements to become available before executing particular actions, thereby avoiding the issue of unstable tests, rather than managing the waiting-through code in test scripts. As a result, the tests are simpler to manage and more reliable.
Network control- By handling different authentication methods, simulating file uploads and downloads, intercepting network requests, and mocking out request responses, test scripts can change the conditions for the application being tested.
Browser contexts- Browser contexts are separate environments on the top of a single browser instance. They enable the development of concurrent tests that run in parallel with the browser context and are completely independent of one another. By doing so, it is possible to test persistent sessions across tabs and make sure the web app can run in incognito mode. The advantage of this method is that it takes far less time to create a new browser context than it does to launch one.
Permissions- Notifications and geolocation permissions are frequently enabled and simulated, and user settings like the color scheme are modified to print in dark mode.
Multi-browser support- Playwright allows testing on all major browsers: Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Opera.
CI/CD Integration- Popular CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, Travis CI, and GitHub Actions are easy to integrate with Playwright.
Unified API- For automating web browsers, Playwright offers a uniform API. This enables users to automate several browsers using the same API.
Integrated screenshots and video recording- By collecting screenshots and recording videos of the test execution, Playwright makes it simpler to debug and analyze test failures.
Multi-language support- Playwright supports numerous programming languages including JavaScript, C#, Java, and Python, so testers are not limited to just one while using it.
Simply said, the Playwright testing framework offers users an extensive range of advanced capabilities that make it an excellent and perfect choice for end-to-end, cross-browser, and API testing.
Why choose Playwright for automated cross-browser testing
To meet the demands of contemporary agile teams, the Playwright framework was developed recently. Playwright is used by many test teams because of all the advantages it offers for seamless testing. Let’s examine the benefits of using Playwright for cross-browser testing.
Automate several scenarios using a single API
The playwright has a foundation that prioritizes rapid and reliable execution and can automate a variety of scenarios across many browsers with a single API.
Improved test efficiency and coverage
QA teams can use Playwright to obtain thorough test coverage, which is essential for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. It also supports a variety of programming languages, which greatly increases accessibility.
Complex web scenarios handling
Managing complexity in web-based situations that span many frames, such as file downloads, tabs, pop-ups, and multi-factor authentication, is natively supported by Playwright. Thus automating these scenarios guarantees thorough testing.
Integrated reporting tools
The QA process depends heavily on reporting test findings. The default reporters included with Playwright include List, Line, Dot, HTML, JSON, and JUnit. The framework also supports integration with third-party reporters including Allure, Test results, ReportPortal, Currents, and Serenity/JS, and enables the creation of customized reports.
Debugging and troubleshooting
Playwright includes debugging and troubleshooting tools that make it simpler for QA teams to determine why a test failed, isolate problems, and resolve them. These tools include extensive logging and interactive modes. Testers can access the recordings of the Playwright tests via its trace viewer’s console logs, allowing them to jump from one action to the next and examine what went wrong during each one.
Improved reliability with timeout-free automation
Playwright automatically waits for the UI to be ready before doing any actions, making tests easier to develop and more reliable to run. This aids testers in getting rid of the issue of unstable testing, allowing developers and testers to build tests that concentrate on the scenario rather than on time or UI state. As a result, test code is now much easier to maintain over time.
Test execution in parallel
Playwright has been known for being extremely quick because it was designed to provide quick, parallelized automation in local and cloud situations. Multiple isolated and concurrent browser contexts can be created by a single instance of Chromium, Firefox, or WebKit. This greatly enhances performance and allows for running concurrent multi-page emulation scenarios across various device setups. It is possible to host several web pages and define context-level behavior, such as network interception or login information, by running tests in separate browser contexts.
Significant potential for future automation
The web platform is always changing. Due to its ability to automate a broad range of features across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API, Playwright is designed to keep up with the expanding capabilities of web browsers and web apps.
Cross-browser testing with Playwright on LambdaTest
Users may utilize numerous versions of every browser simultaneously. Testing every accessible browser version with every different operating system on local computers is particularly challenging when it comes to cross-browser compatibility testing. Therefore, testers need to cover all their bases to conduct effective cross-browser testing.
They must therefore make sure they have full browser coverage, a safe environment in which to run the tests, the capacity to scale as the needs of the application require, and simple integration of their preferred testing tool and testing platform. The most effective approach to achieve this is to run the automated test on the test orchestration and execution platform that provides real devices, and browsers each with a different version.
LambdaTest is a test orchestration and execution platform powered by AI, that allows running both manual and automated tests at scale. With the help of this platform, users may perform automated and real-time testing across more than 3000 environments and real mobile devices. This enables geographically dispersed teams to expand their testing at the speed they want.
This platform seamlessly integrates with many automation frameworks, including Playwright. LambdaTest enables testers to quickly perform cross-browser testing with Playwright, using its online automation browser testing grid even for extensive test suites.
Testers may use Playwright to run a variety of tests on this platform, including cross-browser tests, visual tests, functional tests, regression tests, geolocation tests, etc. Additional features of LambdaTest include high-scale parallelization to speed up testing, smooth CI/CD integration with tools like Jenkins, Azure Pipelines, and GitHub, and simple playwright debugging with video recordings, screenshots, logs, and test reports.
Conclusion
Many developers and testers use Playwright, the most popular framework, to improve processes and the efficiency of cross-browser testing and other sorts of web application testing.
Playwright is an effective tool that makes it simple to test web applications across numerous browsers and operating systems to guarantee a consistent user experience and identify any possible issues before they arise. It enables increasing test accuracy, accelerating the QA process, reducing the number of unstable tests, and optimizing the functionality and performance of websites and web applications.
