CrossBrowserTesting.com

A Design, Development, Testing Blog

November Product Update

By Leave a Comment

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 faster. 

Initial feedback from customers utilizing our headless capabilities has been promising, just ask one that belongs to a large automotive group!

“Headless Testing allowed us to effortlessly switch all of our GUI tests to run in headless mode and reduce regression cycles from 6 hours to 2.25 hours.”

Also, check out a recent webinar the team presented to introduce Headless Testing!

Bitbar: Mobile App Testing

Can you believe its been 82 days since Bitbar joined the SmartBear family?? Us either, seems like it was yesterday! 

Bitbar, the most flexible cloud-based mobile app testing solution allows you to use any framework to run manual or automated tests on thousands of real devices for your mobile app.

The CrossBrowserTesting and Bitbar team will be running a webinar to highlight how these complimentary tools can cover both your browser and mobile app testing. Register HERE!

Local Tunneling Improvements!

In addition to making our Local Connection tool more stable and reliable, we’ve also made it faster! Almost 6 times faster. The increase in speed is especially noticeable when running Screenshot tests or parallel Selenium tests to non-public websites. Make sure to download the latest version for your platform.

New Browsers and Operating Systems

We released Firefox 40, Chrome 78 on OSX and Windows.  We also released OSX 10.15 and iOS 13 on iPhone 11 & iPhone XS Max!  Check out the browsers and devices!

Bug of the Month

We recently had an internal network issue at CrossBrowserTesting where failover to a redundant piece of hardware failed, causing a brief outage. This was caused by a configuration in hardware that, when failover was originally tested, worked fine. We eventually found the issue — after a period of time, the configuration for failover goes stale and stops working in a failover event. Testing immediately after setting up the device was not enough to catch this issue.

We thought this was interesting to share since there are a lot of variables, and it is hard to test for all permutations, or to even be aware of them. In this case, time since starting the service was just such a hidden variable.

Why Should I Run My Selenium Tests in Headless?

By Leave a Comment

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 capabilities Selenium offers, but few know about running their tests in headless browsers. And even fewer actually deploy this approach in their daily testing. With headless testing you can increase your testing performance to an all-time high.

What is Headless testing?

Headless testing is simply running your Selenium tests using a headless browser. It operates as your typical browser would, but without a user interface, making it excellent for automated testing.

How does Headless testing benefit developers?

There are several benefits, actually. They can create new testing opportunities, as well as accelerate tests you’re already running.

Benefits include:

  • Greater testing reach
  • Improved speed and performance
  • Multitasking

Greater testing reach

When running Selenium tests, you typically need a machine that supports the graphics of the web browser that you’re testing on. With headless testing we get rid of this need and open up a whole new set of devices to test on. Ex. Servers, docker containers, etc.

Improved speed and performance

Selenium tests can take a while to complete, due to elements on a page that the browser needs to load. Headless testing gets rid of this load time, allowing you to cut your testing times significantly. In our tests with headless testing, we’ve seen a 30% reduction of test execution times. And you can use other techniques, like running more tests in parallel, to amplify that benefit.

Multitasking

Running normal Selenium tests take up your screen time, keeping you from being able to accomplish anything else on that device. With the UI disabled, headless testing lets you continue to use your computer while the tests execute in the background.

In our conversations with customers, we’ve found that headless testing has let developers experience all of these benefits – and many more!

How have you used headless testing to improve your processes? And where do you see opportunities to take advantage of them? Respond in the comments!

To help you get started Headless testing with CrossBrowserTesting, visit our help page: Headless Testing Documentation