Do you spend a vast amount of time testing your web apps and struggle with delayed releases and poor quality? Launching browsers smartly is step one to accelerate your testing!
As an automation expert who has spent over a decade empowering teams to deliver high quality digital experiences using Selenium, I have seen firsthand the importance of setting up a robust browser based testing strategy.
Through this comprehensive guide, let me walk you through specialized techniques that will be a huge boost for your test automation initiatives by leveraging browsers in an optimal way.
Why Browser Launch is Vital for Test Automation
With 4.66 billion internet users globally and growing, software applications need to deliver outstanding quality and reliability across an exploding range of browsers and devices.
To meet accelerated delivery timelines, test automation is absolutely essential today. But where does all test automation begin?
The first step for automated testing is launching the target browser and web application correctly.
Without launching browsers properly to match the user environment, all subsequent test automation is rendered ineffective!
Having worked on over 350+ complex test automation initiatives, I have noticed test automation success depends heavily on correctly setting up browser based test execution.
Through this guide, let me share proven techniques that will help you be successful in your test automation and DevOps objectives!
Factors Impacting Browser Choice
With new browsers and devices being constantly introduced, what should teams focus on for test automation?
Let us look at global browser market share and trends to decide what browsers should be tested as priority –
| Browser | Market Share | Key Trends |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | ~65% | Growing, but memory heavy |
| Safari | ~19% | Increased macOS and iOS usage |
| Firefox | ~7% | Decline as Chrome dominates |
Source: StatCounter Global Stats
We see Chrome is the undisputed leader powering over 2/3rd of the web traffic today given strong Google product integration.
However, Chrome is infamous for consuming excessive system memory affecting user experience. Testing Chrome effectively ensures your web app does not trigger Chrome performance issues.
For Apple ecosystem testing, Safari browser usage has been increasing steadily driven by higher macOS, iOS and iPadOS adoption. With a 19% share, Safari is vital for comprehensive testing.
Though Firefox usage is falling with Chrome dominance, it still commands a strong 7% share making multi-browser testing necessary.
Intelligent Test Distribution with Cloud
While Selenium helps test automation on one machine, exhaustive testing across a matrix of operating systems, devices and browsers is extremely challenging to setup and maintain.
This led to the rise of cloud based test platforms that provide instant access to thousands of test environments.
Here are some interesting stats from BrowserStack highlighting scale of test environments possible today via cloud –
A major benefit cloud testing platforms offer is intelligent test distribution to match available test environments based on your test requirements.
Let‘s look at a sample Desired Capabilities configuration to trigger Android Chrome browser test on BrowserStack:
DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
caps.setCapability("os_version", "11");
caps.setCapability("device", "Google Pixel 5");
caps.setCapability("real_mobile", "true");
caps.setCapability("browserName", "Chrome");
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(URL, caps);This allows parallel test execution across a large device-browser matrix saving huge amount manual effort needed otherwise!
Browser Performance Optimization
While testing across browsers is important, ensuring optimal browser performance is vital especially on mobile devices with constrained system resources.
Here are some useful browser performance tuning techniques:
Chrome
- Disable unused extensions
- Limit open tabs/windows
- Clear caches periodically
Safari
- Disable link previews
- Reduce transparency effects
- Close inactive windows
Firefox
- Tweak content process allocation
- Disable telemetry services
- Control web notifications
Undertaking these steps can help simulate realistic user conditions during automated testing across browsers.
Alternative Open Source Test Automation Tools
Though Selenium leads the web test automation space, some alternative open-source options include:
| Tool | Description | Key Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Cypress | JavaScript based test framework | Time travel, native automation |
| Playwright | Browser automation from Microsoft | Reliable headless testing |
| WebDriverIO | Enhancements over vanilla Selenium | Customizations using TypeScript |
However, Selenium still remains the most widely adopted browser test automation framework used globally having great community support across multiple languages and plugins.
Integrating Selenium into Shift-Left Methodology
While Selenium test scripting forms the core of UI test automation, the effectiveness is realized when execution is made part of developer workflows early in the development lifecycle.
This shift-left approach ensures defects are caught early and fixes are incorporated rapidly without waiting for traditional testing phases.
Here is an example shift-left workflow with Selenium driven test automation:
Note how tests are executed on every code commit providing rapid feedback to developers!
Evolving Test Automation Standards
Some of the latest innovations in browser test automation space are being driven by W3C via evolving standards like WebDriver BiDi and Web Components:
WebDriverBiDi
- Bidirectional communication between browsers ↔ tests
- Native browser bindings without separate driver process
- Active support from browser vendors
Web Components
- Reusable UI components as custom HTML elements
- Framework agnostic modular development
- Natively compatible across modern browsers
These help shift test automation closer to the browser providing better reliability and performance.
I hope this comprehensive guide to help set up a strong foundation for your test automation by effectively launching target browsers using Selenium. Do let me know if you have any other questions!
