Moving to Automation
Using CrossBrowserTesting and Selenium was a recipe for testing success, hitting all the major needs America’s Test Kitchen identified as important.
With over 2050 real desktop and mobile browsers, there was more than enough support for automation efforts across the same browsers and devices that reflected America’s Test Kitchen users.
America’s Test Kitchen was immediately impressed by CrossBrowserTesting’s integration with Selenium. Automated Testing allowed them to create new tests easily, integrate them quickly, interactively view automated test runs.
They were particularly excited about using Selenium and CrossBrowserTesting for handling different user states. With different account access based on membership, it was important to the QA team that they were able to automate actions that could be reused in different scenarios.
Additionally, tests could now be run overnight, saving valuable time during regressions and allowing the team to come back to straightforward pass or fail results in the morning.
Not to mention, the ability to prioritize these results was an important value-add feature. CrossBrowserTesting helps to organize and process them easily and effectively with tags, descriptions, and labels that let others know why tests might be failing.
When a test fails, screenshots, video capture, and links make it easy for different team members to evaluate scenarios and pinpoint what went wrong.
In this way, CrossBrowserTesting has proven to be more than just a testing tool. It’s also a communication tool that helps QA share what they find with the entire team including development, design, and UX.
Going Beyond Selenium
While Selenium is a fundamental part of the America’s Test Kitchen QA strategy, CrossBrowserTesting helps in other ways as well. With other functions such as Live and Visual Testing, the team is able to find the perfect balance of manual and automated testing.
Not all tests can be automated, which is why America’s Test Kitchen relies on CrossBrowserTesting’s Live Testing feature for the real device coverage needed when performing tests manually.
Even though stakeholders may not be in the same office, testing in the cloud makes it’s easy for different contributors to discuss a bug or new feature remotely, and anyone on the team can access the specific browser or device without having it on hand.
Video capture has also been an asset for recording videos and sharing links to clarify a confusing test. This has been crucial for helping the QA team identify and share bugs that may be hard to reproduce, so they can identify what needs to be fixed and determine how to fix it.
Additionally, the QA team has been able to set up a database of homepage images over time for each site with CrossBrowserTesting screenshot automation, allowing them to visually compare how each site changes whether they want to evaluate day by day or year over year.
Complementary Ingredients
Implementing test automation takes time, dedication, support, and a healthy mix of manual testing to be successful.
America’s Test Kitchen uses CrossBrowserTesting in several ways to meet these needs from building and running tests to organizing results and collaborating with stakeholders.
The team has experienced tremendous growth on their road to test automation, expanding to three QA members, refining their Selenium skills, strengthening their manual testing strategy, and increasing test coverage thanks to a powerhouse QA team and a little help from CrossBrowserTesting.
As the America’s Test Kitchen website content and user base continues to grow, they can be confident that their testing strategy is built to scale
“CrossBrowserTesting offers a great amount of browsers whether it's IE, edge, or older versions of Chrome on desktop or mobile devices.”
Michael Ng
Automation Engineer, America's Test Kitchen