Last week, I had the chance to meet with Triquestra, a SmartBear customer providing innovative technology solutions to retailers around the globe. Their head of delivery said the above line to me as we discussed the rising challenges for retailers to meet modern user expectations. Full transparency—I told him I was definitely stealing that line for this blog. I also […]
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The Junction of Browser Testing and Test Management
Software development – and subsequently software testing – is happening at speeds which we’ve never seen before. With many tests being set up and deployed automatically in order to keep up with pace and maintain quality and diligence throughout the testing process, keeping track of those tests has become even more paramount. This is the […]
Connecting your Back-End and Front-End Functional Testing
Many SmartBear testers who use SoapUI Pro to tackle their automated API functional testing know the importance of end-to-end testing of the entire back-end. Making sure those critical web services like REST, GraphQL APIs, and others are functioning is why testers use SoapUI Pro to create, run, and analyze complex tests. Creating comprehensive end-to-end tests […]
The Benefits of Increased Parallel Testing
Quality at speed is the new mantra for most CIOs. In response, Development Operations has evolved their software lifecycle- becoming both more agile and more scalable while attempting to deliver a flawless experience. In response, companies are constantly delivering new products and updates to consumers, and the speed with which they can deliver quality code and features is limited by a dependency on slow and intricate testing process. This rapid pace of […]
Ensuring Mobile Excellence with SmartBear Recap
Digital transformation has been embraced by most organizations. More than ever, people turn to mobile devices to stay connected with the world and each other, and that includes engaging with businesses. With this expansion of users on all devices and platform, businesses are striving for digital excellence while they manage transformation and product roll out. According to Hackermoon, internet usage has increased by as much as 70% as […]
Manual Cross-browser Testing for Beginners Part 2: Tools and How to
Welcome back to the second part of our manual cross-browser testing tutorial for beginners! In the last part of this series, we talked about what cross-browser tests are, why you need to conduct them, and what different types of tests we know. If you haven’t read the first part yet, we encourage you to do […]
Manual Cross-browser Testing for Beginners Part 1: Concepts and Types
You have probably noticed that automated testing receives a lot of love and hype right now. That’s because they can accelerate test execution times and make room for other, more pressing tasks. However, manual testing is still very much relevant as we cannot automate everything (not yet at least). For this reason, we want to […]
How to Successfully Automate Your Cross-Browser Tests
Testing your software or application before releasing it into the wild isn’t just a nice-to-have. Developers and QA teams spend hours making sure their company releases high-quality products. However, testing practices and requirements for web apps have changed in recent years, and new complexities require efficient solutions, such as test automation. So let’s talk more […]
Must-Have Components of Your Successful Web App Test Strategy
In the early days of the WWW era, websites were rather static and simple. Today though, many web applications are quite complicated and more so what people think of as “software.” This complexity comes with a lot of responsibility since you want your app to perform as expected and please your users. This is why […]
Why Your Tests Are Suddenly Running Faster
Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that your Selenium tests on CrossBrowserTesting are running faster and with more consistent timing. This isn’t a fluke or a random variance. We made significant changes to the way our Selenium Hub works in our infrastructure that greatly reduced the time it takes to execute each […]
Microsoft Releases its New Browser, ChrEdge!
What does Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge browser mean? Microsoft recently released its new Chromium based version of Edge, which many, like us, have taken to calling ChrEdge! The stable release was made available early January 15th for direct download, but have indicated it will be released in stages and will continue over the next few […]
Real Device and Browser Testing Strategy for 2020
Check out the latest blog from the CrossBrowserTesting and Bitbar team as we help you get off on the right foot for 2020! With the new year coming in big strides, it’s time to start thinking about your real device and browser testing strategy for 2020. As you can imagine, testing without a proper plan […]
Parallel Testing: What It Is and Why You Should Adopt It
Our friends over at Bitbar recently wrote another fantastic blog about parallel testing, what it is and why you should adopt it. Take a look below! The continuous integration and delivery methodology is a great way to keep you releasing high-quality products in the shortest possible time. All of this relies on continuous testing and requires a faster test cycle. While […]
Blueprint for Automation using Selenium
Getting started with Selenium can be a tough task! But to help you build a solid foundation, you’ll need to understand the ins and outs of Selenium, how it works, and some tips on how to get started. What is Selenium? The Selenium tool set consists of the Selenium IDE, Selenium Grid, and the Selenium […]
November Product Update
Welcome to Novembers Product Update from the CrossBrowserTesting Team! Making the Switch to Headless As we mentioned in last months product update, we recently released Headless Testing to our feature portfolio. Developers and automated testers can now rapidly validate that their web application or website is working as expected, earlier in the development process and […]
Do You Know How to Program in Python?
I was fortunate enough to take some classes in college that included Python in its curriculum, giving me a certain level of familiarity with it. But the funny thing was, there wasn’t a class that specifically focused on Python. I had the ability to apply general knowledge of how programming languages operate to Python, but […]
October Product Update
Welcome to Q4! If your company is anything like ours, you have quarterly deliverables, no matter which department. We’ve had a busy Q3 behind the scenes with minimal public-facing changes, and now we’re ready to start releasing the work we’ve recently accomplished. Q4 is also really busy for us as we release a bunch of […]
6 Key Factors That Improve Cross Browser Testing
Our friends over at Bitbar recently wrote a fantastic blog about 6 key factors that can improve your cross browser testing. Take a look below! If you start thinking about testing after the completion of your web application, you’re already too late. The decisions you make before and during development impact and shape testing more […]
Why Should I Run My Selenium Tests in Headless?
Headless testing is greatly underutilized – here are three quick ways it can increase performance Selenium has grown to be one of the most popular automation tools available today. It automates many tasks needed for online testing, including checking titles, navigating pages, clicking links, and much more. Many developers already use the full set of […]
Selenium Academy 201 FAQ
Hopefully you were able to attend our Selenium 201 class a couple weeks back to learn some best practices when it comes to automating your tests with Selenium. Or if you couldn’t attend, not to worry! We had a very engaged Live Q&A session at the end of our webinar and we’re going to highlight […]
September Product Update
Did you hear about our Summer Blockbuster? SmartBear has acquired Bitbar, expanding our breadth of Native Mobile App testing innovation. Bitbar is an established best-in-class product, and is a perfect complement to CrossBrowserTesting—so welcome to the family, Bitbar! Though we’ll pass on the bunk beds and the boat crashing. Full-Page Screenshot Options A few months […]
Extending the Elastic Stack to Fit Our Needs
We are big proponents of the Elastic Stack here at CrossBrowserTesting – we use it for gathering metrics about system performance, tracing down issues in our stack, and identifying targeted improvements to our systems. Elastic, the company that produces the Elastic Stack’s core tooling, offers a lot of flexibility and power. We are able to […]
Hands-On UI Testing With Python FAQ
On August 14, 2019, I teamed up with SmartBear to deliver a one-hour webinar about Web UI testing with Python! It was an honor to work with Nicholas Brown, Digital Marketing Manager for CrossBrowserTesting at SmartBear Software, to make this webinar happen. Check out the On-Demand version of the webinar! In the webinar, I showed how to […]
Getting Started With CrossBrowserTesting’s API
APIs are a powerful way to connect to a company’s products and services to use their existing infrastructure seamlessly. Here at CrossBrowserTesting we are no exception to this statement What is an API? The term API is an acronym, and it stands for “Application Programming Interface.” APIs make your life as a developer much easier […]
August Product Update
Hot out of the hottest month on record, here are product updates from the last month. It’s a short one but it highlights some valuable updates from the team. Be on the lookout for some bigger updates in the coming months! Free automation minutes Live plans now have access to a limited number of automation […]
Selenium Academy 101 FAQ
With the conclusion of our very first Selenium Academy class we wanted to ensure we armed you with the answers to some of the most common questions that came up during our live QA session! In our Selenium 101 class we started at the very beginning by explaining what Selenium is, why you will want […]
July Product Updates
Feature: Welcome to SmartBear # Welcome Cucumber.io Scenario: SmartBear makes a new acquisition Given SmartBear has added Cucumber to its portfolio When You use it with CrossBrowserTesting Then You’re well on your way to BDD testing! Welcome to the family, Cucumber! The team at CrossBrowserTesting is looking forward to helping more people easily use BDD […]
Quick Tips To Improve Your Selenium Testing With Python
Selenium can be one of the most powerful tools in a QA Engineer’s arsenal. Unfortunately, it can be time consuming to write and a nightmare to maintain. That’s why I’m here to give you some quick tips to help your testing run as smooth as possible with Selenium and Python. What Are Some Common Problems? […]
Designing with Code
The days of complex CSS hacks and legacy dependencies just to get a simple website to look good are gone. There’s a continued conversation around the friction of Designers Learning Code and Developers Learning Design. My hope with this blog is that I can introduce you to some very simple concepts and techniques that make […]
Using DevOps Practices to Improve Productivity and Happiness
DevOps has become such a common topic of discussion that it almost sounds like a buzzword at times. But there are some really great ideas that live under the DevOps umbrella, you just need to peel the onion back a little. Even if you are tired of hearing people say, “We use JIRA, we’re Agile […]
June Product Updates
The days are getting longer but apparently not long enough for me to have written a May updates post. Oops! Here’s what’s new in the last two months. Screenshot Improvements We built our screenshot system in the early days of CrossBrowserTesting when the available technologies were very different. After years of incremental improvements, we’re finally […]
We Now Integrate With the Leader in Test Management – Zephyr!
We have a great new integration that we’d like to let you know about! CrossBrowserTesting can now seamlessly integrate with the leader in test management, Zephyr. Zephyr, the most widely used test management tool to work natively inside Jira, joined the SmartBear family in 2018 so we could both expand our test management portfolio and […]
Testing Our Screenshot Service Internally
How do we ensure our Screenshot service works for each browser, as well as special use cases, as we continuously integrate updates to VMs, devices, and infrastructure? Problem: CrossBrowserTesting‘s Screenshot service has 1500+ browser combinations across desktops and mobile devices. Not to mention the permutations: Single Pages, Long Pages, Basic Auth, Login Profiles, Selenium Scripts, […]
April Product Updates
Welcome to Spring, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. It’s been a very busy March for CrossBrowserTesting. Our team put in a lot of overtime this month, rolling out new browsers, fixing bugs, and making some major infrastructure changes. If you’re doing some spring cleaning of your code to refresh your site, or some […]
Are These 5 Gaps Missing From Your UI Test Automation Strategy?
As more and more organizations integrate test automation into their workflows, teams have benefitted from shortened feedback loops and less time between development and delivery. However, while automation has been an asset for effective and efficient testing, many of us are still getting acquainted with the skills required to build out tests that give us […]
Testing React Apps with Selenium
When I was young, I loved to play browser-based games. Several of them were essentially HTML text adventures — you would navigate by clicking links or images, then the page would reload with the results of whatever action you took. Click. Page goes white. Images slowly load from top to bottom. Click. White page. Images […]
Founder Tale: The CrossBrowserTesting Origin Story
CrossBrowserTesting started 11 years ago. The idea was born from a need. The incentive was born from a need also… my previous startup had hit rough water. Seeing no good options for a pivot, and having no great desire to “work for the man” again, it was time for a new plan. Fear of getting […]
March Product Updates
Are you dreading the Ides of March? According to the History Channel, “the Ides of March once signified the new year, which meant celebrations and rejoicing.” Positive or negative connotations aside, we here at CrossBrowserTesting have some great improvements that we hope bring you celebration and rejoicing. Faster Mobiles – Scrolling, Clicking, FPS Our mobile […]
You Are (Not) a Fraud: Dealing With Impostor Syndrome
When I started at CrossBrowserTesting a little over a year ago, I came here with no formal training in much of what I do. The people who I work with are all exceptionally intelligent, creative, and just plain cool people. I felt out of my element — here I was, surrounded by all these people […]
The Advantage of A/B Testing With Browser Screenshots
When we think of web testing, we often attribute it to the role of QA professionals. However, digital marketing teams also have a lot to gain from testing different aspects of their website. There are many ways to perform web testing in marketing, which we’ve outlined in our Marketer’s Guide to Testing. One of the […]
Experience Secure Testing in Our Google Chrome Local Connection Extension
Keeping a web application that’s behind a firewall can be tricky — it’s important to do thorough testing, but going public and exposing potential bugs to customers in order to run those tests might defeat the purpose. Of course, there are many reasons to keep a web application behind a firewall in the first place, […]
Maximum Concurrency with Nightwatch.js
You made it. After weeks writing a dozen Selenium tests with Nightwatch.js, you are done. Your elements have been found, your buttons have been clicked, and your page objects have been modeled. The only thing left is to run your suite of tests across all the browsers you care about. That’s where parallel testing comes […]
SmartBear Named a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Software Test Automation
SmartBear was named a Leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Software Test Automation. Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, has recognized SmartBear for the fourth consecutive year, with this being the first as a Leader. Amidst emerging trends in DevOps and Agile Development, SmartBear has solidified its commitment to […]
How Responsive Web Design Will Change in 2019 and Beyond
For years now, we’ve been aware of the importance of building responsive web applications so that they are visually and functionally sound when accessed on a myriad of devices. However, while we’ve been used to designing for the standard smartphone, tablet, and desktop screen sizes previously, evolving technologies may challenge what it means to be […]
Looking Back at the Top 10 CrossBrowserTesting Blogs of 2018
This year has been nothing if not exciting in the software testing and development space. We saw Microsoft acquire Github and Selenium IDE make a resurgence. Then over at CrossBrowserTesting, we released major new features like Record & Replay and test scheduling. Now, as we look back in at the year in review, we also […]
Why You Shouldn’t Skimp on Both Functional and Visual UI Testing
There are many components to a successful web testing strategy, but one of the most often overlooked is the importance of visual UI testing in addition to functional testing. Most teams will focus on one over the other, but to truly catch as many bugs as possible, you’ll need to incorporate both. First, you need […]
3 Methods for Hands-free Continuous Testing
In order to strike the perfect balance between speed and quality, teams that hope to achieve Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery must also implement Continuous Testing. This is often easier said than done. It’s virtually impossible to have your team running tests at every moment — they do have lives outside of work after all, […]
Using Agenda to Build User-Created Tasks in Scheduling
At CrossBrowserTesting, we wanted to give our users the ability to schedule their suite runs and screenshot tests to run regularly. An example user story for this feature would be: Every morning Natalie wants to be reminded to check the status of one of the websites she administers. These tests help her make sure her […]
Creating Our New Transcoding Service
Every time a video is recorded by a CrossBrowserTesting user, it goes through a handful of steps. The video is recorded in the Flash Video (*.flv*) format because it is cheap to write to. Because of format issues on the browser side, we then transcode the FLV video to a web-compatible standard inside of an […]
The State of the New Selenium IDE
Last week, Applitools teamed up with Simon Stewart for “Introducing Selenium IDE: The Next Generation”. Selenium IDE is part of the Selenium suite and has been a depreciated record and playback tool, largely because it could only be used in Firefox and had stopped being supported by contributors of the Selenium project. But don’t call […]
Introducing Scheduling for Record & Replay and Automated Screenshots
This year, we introduced Record & Replay for teams that want to automate tests without scripting. This method of codeless automation has allowed teams to maximize the value of every manual test by reducing execution time while increasing speed and coverage. And just like with Selenium testing, once your tests are recorded in Record and […]
Next Steps for Teams Who Want to Move to Agile Project Management
It seems that the companies we all aspire to be more like are moving quicker and releasing faster than ever before. So, how can the rest of us strive to follow in the footsteps of software giants that release innovative software on the hour? While there may be no single, clearly-defined answer, we do know […]
Upcoming Webinar: Achieving Quality Without a Dedicated Test Team
As teams shift left, adopt new methodologies, and take on new testing strategies, the role of software developer v.s. testers is becoming more blurred. In fact, many modern software teams no longer work according to these rigid roles. Meghan Munseeney is a Software Engineer at Yesware who also has a hand in Quality Assurance. This […]
The Spectrum of Testing Practice: Why Are Some Companies Stuck in the 90’s?
Those of us who are passionate about delivering valuable, high-quality software to our customers frequently and at a sustainable pace are living in exciting times. Many are embracing “modern testing” principles. We’re acquiring new skills such as how to help non-testing teammates learn to test, how to analyze production use data, and how to use […]
The Faces Behind Selenium
The CrossBrowserTesting team is getting excited for SeleniumConf. But as we settle in to Chicago, we wanted to take a look back at Selenium’s rich history to highlight some of the faces behind Selenium and meet some of the contributors who’ve made the popular open source automation tool what it is today. So put a face to the […]
Why Safari 11 Tracking Prevention Has Advertisers Up in Arms
Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature was first released earlier this year at WWDC in an effort to increase consumer trust in Apple. ITP makes it harder for businesses to track peoples’ web use for advertising, and with the latest Safari 11 upgrade, Apple has made it even more difficult. ITP 2.0 uses machine learning […]
Last Minute Web Testing Checklist for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Holiday Season
It may seem like the Holiday season is a ways away, but time flies (doesn’t it feel like the year just started?). Your QA team has probably been preparing their web applications for the traffic of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday season for some time now. But if you’re scrambling […]
Windows 10 Update Wipes Files, But You Can Still Safely Test on Edge 18
On October 2, Microsoft released the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which was due to include new features such as cloud clipboard, dark theme, search previews, Edge improvements, and a new screenshot tool. However, the positives didn’t quite outweigh the negatives when the update started deleting files, leaving Microsoft to pull the update just four days […]
The Top 5 Things We Learned in Our Webinar with Bas Dijkstra
Recently, Bas Dijsktra of On Test Automation joined the CrossBrowserTesting team in the webinar “Lighten Up: Methods for Making Your Automation Suite Leaner ”. Bas’s presentation was jam-packed with important lessons and actionable takeaways. To get the most out of it, you should take the time to watch the full webinar at the bottom of this post. But […]
3 Easy Tutorials for Getting Started with Selenium
You’ve learned your first programming language. You’ve familiarized yourself with Selenium. You’ve got a great Selenium testing tool and a great team to support you. You know what to automate and what not to. But where do you start with your first test? No matter how prepared you are, getting started with Selenium can be […]
Why Your Website Looks So Bad on Internet Explorer
Just the mention of Internet Explorer is sure to bring on a migraine for developers and testers. But why is IE so often the browser we love to hate? As we know, your web page will have slight differences across browsers because of the different ways they render HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Oftentimes, this is […]
Balancing Your Automation Strategy with Manual Testing
You’ve heard it a million times before — you can’t automate everything. But if your organization is just starting into the swing of automation, they’re probably thinking about all the ways they can automate. So how do you make sure you maintain the proper balance of manual testing and automation? Whether you have an entire […]
Webinar | Lighten Up: Methods for Making Your Automation Suite Leaner
Selenium has been the testers’ tool of choice for automated functional UI testing, but it’s too often misused. This results in inaccurate results, slow tests, and shallow feedback — and no one wants that. If you’re struggling to write Selenium tests that meet your goals, it might be time to take a step back and […]
What Our Customers’ Top 100 Tested Browser & OS Combinations of 2018 Tell Us
What are the top browsers, operating systems, and devices? We looked at data from the top configurations of CrossBrowserTesting customers tested to give you better insight. After looking at the millions of browser and operating system configurations our customers have tested in 2018, 100 reign supreme. These results have come from a mix of people in […]
Did You Know? CrossBrowserTesting Has Open Source
So many great projects are open source, and we realize just how important it is to the software community over here at CrossBrowserTesting. Many of our integrations are with open source projects, predominately Selenium testing; and as contributors ourselves, we know how important affordable testing and development tools can be to the success of those projects. […]
Challenges of Being the Team’s Sole Tester (Cont.)
PART TWO Recap This is part two of a look with my testing colleagues in Datacom at the challenges of being “that sole tester” on an agile team. What do you mean you missed it? Catch up now! Last time we looked at some of the fundamental theory which underpins so much in IT, “The […]
Google Chrome 69 is Here…And We Love the New Look
Time flies when you’re surfing the web. If you blinked, you may have missed that Google Chrome just turned 10 (which is getting quite old in browser years). From its humble beginnings as the underdog in the browser wars to the popular kid it is today, we’ve seen Chrome go through a lot of changes. […]
Selenium Interview Questions You Should be Prepared to Answer
Software development teams are constantly shifting, which means testers’ roles have to evolve along with them. As we’ve seen more teams go towards Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD, testers are encouraged to concurrently take on skills that better support these workflows and help with faster testing. One of those skills is Selenium. As more software testers […]
Challenges of Being the Team’s Sole Tester
PART ONE Introduction Until relatively recently, the chances are that if you were a tester on a project, you’d be one of a number of such people. You’d have other members of the team to try ideas out, share the workload, cover for you when you’re away. With the recent drive towards agile, we’re seeing the […]
What Robotic Restaurants Can Teach Us About Test Automation
To most people, going out to eat doesn’t evoke the image of robots. But to the four founders of this restaurant, robot chefs are the only viable solution. In this automated kitchen, robots begin cooking your meal in temperature controlled pans as soon as you submit your order. The bots a programmed to spin the […]
CrossBrowserTesting Product Update: What’s New and What’s Coming Up
If you’re a CrossBrowserTesting user, you may have noticed a few new changes. Behind the scenes, our product team is always working hard to make the experience better for you. That’s why we want to share some of the exciting new features, releases, and improvements we’ve been working on this year, as well as some […]
How to Choose a Test Automation Tool
Once you or your team decide you’re ready to get started with automated testing, then comes time to choose your tool. You’ll quickly find that there are a lot of different options to make your decision difficult, but there are going to be many differences between them as well. Looking a little bit closer will […]
How to Prove the ROI of Your Test Automation Efforts
The reason for test automation usually boils down to the fact we all want to get more testing done, faster. But when it comes to proving the return on investment, or the ROI, of your automation efforts, things can become a bit blurry. Whether you’re trying to convince management, your teammates, or whoever’s in charge […]
Launch Countdown: What to Test Before Your Website Goes Live
Planning for the launch of your website is an exciting time, but it can also be stressful if you start thinking about what could go wrong. The best way to make sure your first impression stays in people’s heads for the right reasons is to prepare. First things first, you’ll want to access your website […]
Move Fast, Break Things: How to Test the Limits of Your Web App
When going through an application, it makes sense to perform some of the actions you would think your users would perform. But it may also makes sense to perform some of the actions you wouldn’t expect them to perform. Your users are unpredictable, and the actions that cause complications with your application aren’t always what […]