Anyone who has tested web application would understand the
importance of testing a web page’s compatibility with different browsers and OS
combination. This is a very important but time-consuming and costly affair. Considering
the fact that there are hundreds of browser/platform combinations to test, you
can very well imagine the infrastructure required to cater those needs. It is
here that the cloud services come to our aid.
There are different cloud services which offer the multiple
platforms that we require for our tests. We can choose one based on our
requirement and perform our tests. In this blog I would like to give an
overview of how we can do it.
There are many cloud services like TestingBot, Sauce Labs,
etc. that offer cross browser testing solutions. Some of them offer automation
tools while some offer manual testing platform.
Why choose cloud?
Cross browser tests demand heavy infrastructure, due to the
need of different browser and OS combination and also different versions of the
same browsers. Sometimes, it is a challenge for testers to downgrade the
browser versions to check downward compatibility of particular software. These
challenges can be handled by using clod services.
By using for a particular cloud service provider you can
choose from a list of browsers available to test your website .Please see the
figure below a screenshot from Sauce Labs:
Testing our applications on mobile is yet another challenge.
With mobile technology galloping, the challenge of the test management team is
to take into account of the Wirth’s Law. Cloud service providers are trying
hard to tackle this problem faced by organizations.
By using the service provided by the cloud, you can perform
your testing on any of the browsers manually. See fig below the screenshot for
testing a website in Linux android 4.0:
The manual tests you perform are recorded and can be
revisited at a later point in time.
For those who have difficulty in getting their selenium
configuration done and then later maintaining the software, you can use the
selenium offering by any particular cloud for your automation activities.
Challenges
Whenever you choose a cloud service provider, it is
important to consider the performance of the cloud, so that the speed of your
tests does not get affected. Also security of your data is of a major concern
when you use a public cloud. If you intend to encrypt the data before sending
it to the cloud, it means addition expenditure which has to be taken into
account.
And most importantly the reliability of the Service provider
is major concern for organizations. An unannounced disruption of service can
nullify all the benefits that it offers.
Wrap up
So in view of the above mentioned points, cloud is well
suited to browser testing, provided we do it in the right way. After an analysis of the requirement (like
infrastructure) of the company carefully, a test strategy has to be put in
place. As the second step, a service provider has to be identified and then the
tests have to be executed.
