Forem: aamritaangappa

Introducing LT Debug: A faster, efficient, and simple debugging Chrome extension

aamritaangappa — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 08:53:03 +0000

We leverage Debugging tools, otherwise known as debuggers, to identify if there is any coding error present at different development stages and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). We can utilize them to check and repeat the conditions where a bug was found. We can then take a deeper look at the program state at a particular time while identifying the cause.

Debugging plays an important role in ensuring that software developers, engineers, and testers can fix every error before they release it to the users. This process is complementary to testing, where you learn how an error has occurred to the program.

With all these factors in mind -Drum rolls- LambdaTest is back with a brand new extension called LT Debug to make the life of testers easy and fuss-free while debugging.

Following the success of our responsive checker tools like LT Browser, we are excited to reveal yet another tool that could make developers and testers dive into the abyss of debugging and stay afloat in testing.

The story behind LT Debug

LambdaTest is a product company on its own. We can understand the pain of testers better than Michael Scott (Much better!). We have been in the field of software testing and debugging for the past 5+ years. Our product at request team has kept their eyes, ears, and heart open to the testing community. They have listened to the requests of many awesome testers needing a debugging tool, Chrome extension.

The problem statement of testers worldwide is more or less the same when we talk about debugging. One of the most common challenges faced by testers is that they feel that debugging is directly proportional to long working hours with complex processes. It’s not always a cakewalk when you go to Google console to inject the test script. Paying a visit to the source code and changing it wouldn’t help much.

Now, here is a think tank: Is it easy to write a syntax and code or to write a syntax and fill the form?

The second option, obviously, right? That’s what made our team hop into brainstorming over many cups of coffee, take baby steps in product development, and finally, LT Debug is live!

This free developer tool is simple-to-use with over nine amazing features used by web developers and testers during debugging on a day-by-day basis.

The coolest part is it’s available in Dark Mode with your system setup to ensure that even your little needs are taken care of by us. Now, get back to work without any strain. Just click on the sun and moon icon at the top right corner to activate them as per your choice.

Get started with this complete Selenium automation testing tutorial. Learn what Selenium is, its architecture, advantages and more for automated cross browser testing.

How to install LT Debug?

Installation of LT Debug is as simple as spelling your name. Here is our simple step-by-step installation process:

Step 1: Go to the LT Debug Chrome Extension page.

Step 2: Click Add to Chrome. You will be redirected to the Chrome web store.

Step 3: Click Add to Chrome. A pop-up will appear asking if you need to add “LT Debug” to your browser. Click on Add extension.

Step 3: All done! Now, you can choose the feature you want to add and debug.

Here is a gist of how to debug mobile browsers with our developer tools:

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel to learn more about cross browser compatibility, real time testing, and responsiveness testing.

Run your Playwright test scripts instantly on 50+ browser and OS combinations using the LambdaTest cloud.

Top features of LT Debug

So far, we have nine features for our most loved tribe of testers and developers. Let’s take you through a tour:

Add/Modify Headers

With this feature, you can add, remove or modify the header, be it a request header or a response header. This way, you can easily test a header for a website request.

How to do it?

Step 1: Click on Modify Headers. Provide the needed values to modify the request header. Input the URL value and click Save.

Step 2: You can directly notice that the changes have been implemented on the request header value by clicking on the three dotted lines at the right corner of the screen of your Chrome browser. Go to More tools -> Developer tools-> Network-> Headers and click on the website source you need to test.

Block Requests

LT Debug offers a feature to block HTTP requests based on your specific URL filter conditions. With this feature, you can easily filter URL requests as and when you like.

Step 1: Go to Block Requests. Type the exact URL or URL with a specific word. E.g: For lambdatest.com, you can just provide lambdatest. That would suffice. Click on Save.

Step 2: Now, the URL will have got blocked when you try to visit the website.

Throttle Response

With this feature, you can efficiently perform network throttling to control network speed for every network request. Choose the URL of your choice when you want to reduce the speed or function at normal speed. You can also control if there is any millisecond delay.

Easily emulate network speed based on the use case without diving into Chrome element inspector. Not every user would have access to 4G or 5G. You can also try checking your website performance in a slow 3G network to understand how it performs in such geographical areas.

Here is how to try it:

Step 1: Open the LT Debug Chrome Extension tab. Click on Throttle Response.

Step 2: Provide your network type and URL. For example, you can try slow 3G.

Step 2: You can check for the performance under Slow 3G by visiting the website.

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Add/Remove Query Param

With this feature, you can simply change and modify the URL query parameters. The function of URL parameters is to read and organize the key, along with the value pairs present on the particular web page. This can simplify your debugging experience.

Step 1: Check out by adding a query param with key Param Name as Par 1 and the Param Value as Val 1 to URLs containing the word “lambdatest”. This will redirect you to the needed page whenever you visit the URL with the value “lambdatest” in it.

Step 2: Visit lambdatest.com to witness the changes reflected on the query parameter, right from the header.

Redirect Requests

Use the redirect request tool when you want to configure a URL to redirect them to your preferred web URL.

Step 1: Provide the URL value that needs to be changed to the URL value where you need to redirect it.

Step 2: You can see that when you try to visit lambdatest.com, you are redirected to lambdatest.com/blog.

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Change User Agent

Are you in need of cross browser testing? You can easily switch between different user-agent strings in a faster manner. Simulate, imitate and spoof different browsers, devices and search engine spiders according to your choice.

Step 1: For instance, let’s test our website on the Chrome browser on Windows 10. You can also check for the user agent by More tools -> Developer tools-> Network-> Headers. Scroll down to find the user agent at the end.
This is the user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 [ip:37.163.61.154]

Step 2: Let’s say you want to test on Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP.
Here is the user agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0).

All you need to do is provide the user agent string of the browser and OS in the form.

Step 3: Now, perform the same mentioned in Step 1 to check if the user agent is reflected. Bingo! It has indeed been reflected on the page. Now you can perform cross browser testing just by entering the user agent string. No need to code or write a test script!

Try an online Selenium Testing Grid to run your browser automation testing scripts. Our cloud infrastructure has 3000+ desktop & mobile environments. Try for free.)

Insert Scripts (CSS/JS)

Easily simulate the web page experience as soon as you inject the CSS or JS script on your own in the console.

Step 1: Do you want to test your favorite color as the background color of your website? Let’s provide the CSS code for the same in the form:

body {background-color:blue}

Step 2: Whiz-a-whiz! The background color has changed successfully.

Allow CORS

If you want to perform cross-domain Ajax requests in websites and web apps faster, all you need to do is add the (Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *) rule to your response header. For example, you can easily bypass CORS on lambdatest.com when you turn it on while accessing the resources.

Step 1: All you need to do is provide the URL value.

Step 2: Click on the three dotted lines at the right corner of the screen of your Chrome browser. Go to More tools -> Developer tools-> Network-> Headers to check if the rule has been implemented on the response header.

Content Security Policy

This feature allows you to remove the content security policy header on any website/web page of your choice.

Step 1: Click on the three dotted lines at the right corner of the screen of your Chrome browser. Go to More tools -> Developer tools-> Console. You can see that there is a content blocker due to security policy violations.

Step 2: Click on Content Security Policy. Provide the URL value where you need to remove the content blocker.

Step 3: Now, you can again visit the Console tab to check if the blocker has been removed. In our case, it’s a yes!

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Why should you use LT Debug?

Even though there are many Debugging tools in the market, the tools built with the user in mind emerge as the winner. We believe we are one among them!

Here are the top reasons to trust our LT Debug browser extension:

It’s free of cost forever.
All you need to do is fill out a form and complete your debugging.
You get a link to access 100+ extensions, exclusively for developers and testers, by developers and testers.

Here is how you do it:

Step 1: Click on More Tools.

Step 2: You will be redirected to our free online tools page. Pick a tool of your choice.

Step 3: You set the rules and break them! Go to Manage Rules to view and modify the rules.

Is there any other way to debug using LambdaTest apart from LT Debug?

Yes, of course! Follow these simple steps to debug your website using “Real Time Test”.

Step 1: Signup and Login into your LambdaTest account. Go to Real Time Testing from the left navigation menu. Choose the test configuration from a list of browsers, devices, versions, OS, screen resolution, and so on.

Step 2: Provide the URL of your choice.

Step 3: Right-click your mouse pointer and choose Inspect.

**Step 4: **After that, you can inspect the website as per your needs.

Can I use LT Debug on a different browser other than Chrome?

Right now, we support only the Chrome extension. But don’t worry, we have got you covered through our online browser testing feature.

Step 1: Login to your LambdaTest account. Go to Real Time Testing from the left navigation menu. Choose the test configuration from a list of browsers, devices, versions, OS, screen resolution, and so on.

Step 2: Provide the URL of your choice. Click START.

Step 3: Go to the LT Debug page on the Chrome web store. Copy the URL.

Step 4: Now, click the Chrome Extension icon and add the URL link. All set! Now you can use our real time live testing platform to add and use the LT Debug Chrome extension from any browser of your own, be it Safari or Opera.

Conclusion

Debugging would no longer be an arduous task for web developers and testers. It’s going to be simpler, fun-filled, and flexible when you use LT Debug to fast-track your work. You can also depend on our 100+ extensions if you want to make your testing life seamless. Depend on our online browser farm to perform Selenium automation tests and cross browsing tests in over 3000+ browsers, OS, and devices.

Visit our learning hub for more insights on testing with our automation testing tutorial and mobile app testing.

Happy testing!

Website Testing: A Detailed Guide

aamritaangappa — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 12:42:27 +0000

Websites and web apps are growing in number day by day, and so are the expectations of people for a pleasant web experience. Even though the World Wide Web (WWW) was invented only in 1989 (32 years back), this technology has revolutionized the world we know back then. The best part is that it has made life easier for us. You no longer have to stand in long queues to pay your bills. You can get that done within a few minutes by visiting their website, web app, or mobile app.

Building a website is also easier with endless web development frameworks in the market. Needless to say, the advent of the web has made life we know so far simple and comfortable for us.

If so many websites and web apps exist, wouldn’t we need to test them? That’s where website testing plays an important role. Be it using unit testing frameworks for Selenium automation or user acceptance testing, it’s a long journey ahead when you get into website testing!

In this blog, we will take a deep look into website testing, the structure of web applications, common website testing methods, testing locally hosted websites, and much more.

What is website testing?

Website testing or web testing is checking your web application or website for potential bugs before it is made live and is accessible to the general public. Web testing, or web application testing, checks for functionality, usability, security, compatibility, and performance of the website or the web application.

During this stage, issues such as web application security, the site’s functioning, access to a person with impairments, and its ability to handle traffic are checked.

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Why is website testing necessary?

Do you know? You are one among the 5 billion digital users across the globe.

Websites have started playing a common role in every organization. Even many individuals are keen on starting their blogging website. With technological progress, building a website is of foremost importance to businesses of any size. The best part is the ability to get things done by yourself, be it content, design, or development, using free and open source content management tools in the market.

From a multi-billion dollar company to your next street home baker, everyone can flourish in their career through their online presence. That’s the most loved part about digital marketing.

But, wait! When your website is live and gaining audience traction, what if you come across comments like “I am not able to view it on Safari” or “The pages take too long to load”, it’s going to lead to unnecessary judgments.

That’s why you must carry out website or web app testing.

Website testing is the best way to ensure that your website is error-free and the bugs are discovered and derailed before your web product is live. Website testing means testing many aspects of your website and web application to check how they function.

You need to remember that website testing isn’t simple. So many factors such as cross browser compatibility, performance, reliability, user acceptance, security, and performance come into play.

The enterprises should bring in the best testers for assessing different web aspects across various platforms, devices, and browsers. Testers shouldn’t hesitate to implement best testing practices when they want to skyrocket their web performance. All they need to do is to remember a few pointers in this website testing checklist.

What are the challenges faced in website testing?

Website testing comes up with its challenges that businesses need to consider. Let’s take a look at the top ones among them:

Firewall interaction

You’ll face several instances where a port or a firewall can block a website since it has issues regarding security certificates. You must test your application across different firewalls to stay safe from such incidents.

Web Services validation

Modern-day web applications depend thoroughly upon the web service layers such as XML/SOAP or REST/JSON for exchanging data between different applications or systems. Hence there is a huge scope to test all these applications. To test these web services, you must pick the right tool from your web testing tools.

Consistency maintenance across different browsers

Majority of the users prefer reliable, flexible, and interactive web apps. If a user comes across any inconsistency when they surf on browsers, it becomes a huge headache for enterprises. When you perform usability testing, your developer has to monitor the scalability and interactivity of your application across various browsers through different hardware.

When I conducted a LinkedIn poll asking the biggest expectation people have when they visit any website, out of 174 people, 53% of them indicated user-friendly UI/UX on the web. Nobody wants to spend time on a crumpled website with zig-zag text and images. Developers and testers need to take special care of this matter.

Overcoming performance issues

Your website should load fast- That’s what people expect next to a user-friendly experience. This is also one of the primary goals of website testing. I realized this from the results I achieved from the poll. To overcome this challenge, testers must keenly focus on performance testing with interoperability, extended application, and integration issues.

Security threats

We live in times where digitization has become the norm. We are witnessing an overwhelming rate of cyberattacks. To avoid data breaches and information loss, we must regulate how we conduct security testing. This can help you out when you want to avoid security issues regarding DDoS attacks along with cyber attacks.

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Best Websites and web app testing practices

Before we understand the best website testing practices, let’s touch base with the basics. This is the structure of a web application:

The architecture of a web application would describe different interactions between databases, applications, and middleware systems. This is done to make sure that different apps function on a simultaneous basis. Before we open a web page, we type the URL of the website in the web browser’s address bar. The server would send many files to the browser in response to your request. After that, the user would be able to carry out web interactions. The functioning of a web app is quite similar.

When we deal with any web application, it involves different codes or sub-programs that run parallelly. These are

Client-side Code— The browser-side code that responds to a few user inputs.
Server-side Code— The server-side code that responds directly to the HTTP requests.

The architecture of a web application is vital in modern days since a vast portion of the network traffic globally, along with devices and apps, leverages web-oriented communication. The web app architecture should inevitably deal with factors such as scalability, efficiency, robustness, security, and reliability. That’s where website testing comes into the picture.

Website testing is going to grow from strength to strength with these industry-led practices. It’s apparent that your website audience would eulogize you if you follow these practices:

Everything starts with Documentation

During website testing and web app testing, the tester shouldn’t ignore the importance of documentation. After doing a clear study, they need to document the needed facts in requirements, test cases, test plan, and traceability matrix. Your document would act as a source of truth. Hence you need to be careful when you write it.

Check for Website Functionality

Automated functionality testing is one of the top testing processes to test how the website or web app would sync up with pre-set requirements. It’s all about using black-box testing techniques when a tester wouldn’t be aware of the internal system logic. This also includes validation, links/URL, cookies, and error message testing. You must thoroughly analyze and perform all these tests using the right tool and team.

Leverage Cross Browser Compatibility

With thousands of users accessing websites and web apps on their tablets and mobile phones, enterprises have found a symphony of features and options to impress their audience. Cross browser compatibility tests want to do what Silicon valley did to budding startups in the 1970s and 80s to your websites and web apps. Cross browser compatibility test during website testing aims to make your website responsive.

With responsive web design, you can ensure mobile-friendly and user-friendly applications that work amazingly on every browser, OS, and device. While developers slay it with responsive websites to ensure that the websites and web apps are accessible on different web browser versions, testers can perform cross browser compatibility tests to ensure they are on track.

Learn how to deal with responsive testing with LambdaTest.

Conduct Performance Testing under different conditions

An application shouldn’t crash when put under heavy loads. It should work like a pro on every browser and device. But, alas! A minor design or coding flaw is all it takes to affect the performance of the website on a negative note. Hence you need to perform load testing and check how your website performs under different loads. Get your fingers on the pulse with the best automation load testing tools in the market.

Choose the top parameters for Usability testing

Usability testing and user experience go hand in hand when you want to engage your audience, leads, and visitors and eventually convert them into clients and customers. Evaluating the application’s usability on important parameters such as speed, content readability, accessibility, navigability, and UI design is of utmost importance.

Make use of Geolocation testing

The web is a global, universal platform where a user from the USA can read a blog from an Armenian website. Hence, it’s always better to test your website’s appearance under different geo-locations. Geolocation testing can also be a secret sauce for nailing SEO aspects since you can easily resolve any bug in the website version of a particular nation on time.

Kickstart Interface testing

The method of interface testing confirms that these three major web application components are running perfectly fine- database, web browser, and the web server. We use this testing to check for any interruption when transferring the data. When we do this, we can check if we can check the communication happening between different interfaces. Check out our list of the best UI testing tools and techniques in the market.

Check for Security Issues

It’s a recipe for disaster when you ignore the red flags of web security. A single vulnerability can translate to a high-end data breach, well enough to bring down the big giants to mud. This can lead to a misbalance in morale along with financial consequences. People would lose their trust in your brand eventually.

Hence it’s a must to test your web apps and websites concerning security. Define your quality controls and coding standards. Bring in a cross-functional approach to building policies. Come up with strategies to face both internal as well as external challenges. Keep up with industry standards. Use them as benchmarks during website testing.

Avoid skipping confirmation test

We can always perform change-related testing for tracking the bugs and confirming that they have gotten fixed. It’s always a must to write efficient test cases. Then you need to run and re-run the test cases to ensure that your code is bug-free. Making changes to the code shouldn’t lead to any defects. To affirm this, you can use regression testing, another retesting form in website testing.

Integrate Exploratory Testing with Software Development Life Cycle

Exploratory testing reduces time and levels up the bug discovery process. Testers take some time to write and execute every test case on a simultaneous basis. When you fail to understand the setbacks of exploratory testing, you are prone to more bugs and defects. You can get done with the limitations imposed by website testing by integrating white-hat and black-hat software testing techniques. The integration can produce the most needed test results for your team and go on to reduce the time you take to test.

Accessibility Testing is important

Your website should be accessible to a wide range of users across the globe. A person with impairments should be able to access a particular website more easily. Hence it’s a must to perform accessibility testing to ensure that, for example, your text is also available in audio format through a screen reader and your image contains ALT text.

Perform Database Testing

Performing database testing is a must to check for query execution, query response time, reflection of test data, and avoiding data integrity. For example, when you want to perform Oracle testing, things get easier since you can connect Oracle cloud to different databases via networks. A database management system such as Oracle can help you manage your data and ensure fewer errors in your website database. You can also perform browser compatibility tests of SQL databases.

Conduct Beta Testing

We perform beta testing with the help of limited, real-time users. It’s a must to understand what your user thinks about your product.

Do you want to delve deeper into beta testing, an inseparable part of website testing? Learn how to perform beta testing for apps.

Also, check out Cypress Testing-This helps you Execute & analyze Cypress test scripts online. Deploy quality builds faster with 40+ browser versions on the cloud.

Different approaches to website testing

There are plenty of websites with different approaches to testing them. Websites are broadly classified into these six categories, and so does their testing: Simple static websites, Dynamic web apps, E-commerce websites, Mobile websites, Animated web applications, and Rich Internet web applications.

Simple Static Website testing

A simple static website displays the exact content without any alterations to different visitors. The dependency of these websites primarily lies upon UI and very few functionalities.

To test any static website, you should check various design elements on the web page. The GUI elements include spacing, font size, color, and font style. You should also check for aspects such as broken links, contact form functioning, image display, and so on.

Dynamic web app or CMS website testing

When we talk about a dynamic web application, we usually mean content that requires frequent updating. This can also mean a combination of frontend and backend programming or a content management system such as WordPress, which requires WordPress testing. Examples of front-end languages include HTML and CSS. The most popular backend programming languages would cover PHP, JavaScript, Angular, Python, etc.

To test dynamic web pages and applications, it must ensure that the buttons are functioning correctly and available in a standard format. When something isn’t working, the user should get an error message such as a 404 error. Don’t upload an image without testing it. Check the features for text input. Since dynamic websites would cover single-page apps, you need to keep an eye on session storage.

E-commerce website testing

E-commerce websites are a combo of different features and pages. A tester shouldn’t ignore any of these facts. A tester must check if the products listed in the e-commerce app are directed to the right category. They should also check if the expanded view of the product image works properly. Some important features include logout, login, payment mode, coupons, discounts, etc. You can learn more about it from our earlier blog on e-commerce website testing.

Mobile website testing

For mobile website testing, the tester needs to check for cross browser, cross OS, and cross device compatibility. The site should be compatible with every device, OS, and browser. The best way is to test your website on a real device cloud to check if the website is responsive directly. Your website should fit on every device without horizontal scrolling. Look for important features when you test a mobile website, such as spatial navigation, text truncation, image display, chatbot, etc.

To ensure this, you can use a real device cloud for native app testing tools such as LambdaTest. This can make your website testing and web app testing process simpler and easier.

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel if you want to gather firsthand information on automated browser testing, mobile app testing, and responsive test online.

Animated web applications testing

An animated website allows you to create the needed animations with the capability to run in your browser. You can also inspect and manipulate these animations with declarative means such as CSS. Many developers love After Effects combined with Photoshop when they want to develop animations. It’s powerful enough to do things that JavaScript cannot do.

The most preferred industry method is to sit with an interaction designer and a front-end developer to build an After Effects-powered prototype in JavaScript and CSS. Then you need to conduct unit and integration testing to check for bugs. You can leverage JavaScript libraries such as jQuery or Flash when you want to animate UI elements. You can also create this prototype using Powerpoint to share for user feedback or testing.

Check if the backgrounds, shapes, buttons, icons, and text are performing their duty sincerely. You also need to check if the website or web app is responsive to users when they scroll or use gestures.

Rich Internet web applications testing

RIAs are here to represent the new gen web apps, which provide you with interactive, richer, user-friendly, and dynamic user interfaces compared to traditional ones. The best example is Microsoft Silverlight, the most powerful development tool to create the most interactive and engaging user experiences for mobile and web applications. Another example would be Google Gears, an open-source browser extension for developers to create offline web applications.

Rich Internet web applications often use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which includes a cluster of technologies such as XML, JavaScript, and XMLHttpRequest objects. All these enhancements make it tough to test RIAs regarding testability or interface complexity. To find the exact processes and techniques for efficient RIA interface testing is quite daunting. There is a need for regression testing most of the time. We can also use the execution trace data to check the new statement order when executing the test cases. Using the execution logs, we can get each test case output and know if it’s passed or failed.

You can collect Execution traces:

Through a manual testing approach based on interaction analysis with an RIA of testers or real users.
Interactions with RIA consisting of testers or real users.
Through an automated approach based on Crawling techniques.

Enabling an online Selenium automation test is the best practice for any AJAX application. You can also use Selenium WebDriver to eliminate “Automated Waiting”. It’s quick, logical, versatile, and concise when you want to conduct website and web app testing.

Top trends in website testing

Website testing trends abound. But what trends have caught the attention of the developers and testers like never before? Let’s look at the top 10 trends in website testing:

Agile and DevOps

Many organizations use Agile methodology to tackle faster, ever-changing demands and requirements. On the other hand, DevOps is viewed as a de facto way to manage speed.

DevOps brings in rules, practices, features, and tools for integrating development and operational activities to spare some time. It’s the best-rated solution for organizations needing to reduce the software lifecycles from development to operation and delivery.

With the adoption of DevOps and Agile, teams across the globe are looking forward to developing and delivering high-quality software at high speed. This is the motto behind “Quality of Speed”. This adoption has been gaining more traction in recent days.

Continuous testing can reduce the time and resources invested in finding and fixing defects through shift-left testing.

Test Automation

Here is a statistic by GMInsights, showing the prominence of the test automation market:

According to their research, the Agile and DevOps methods have proven their mettle concerning quick bug removal, integration of sudden software changes, and post-deployment troubleshooting. All these benefits can skyrocket the agile & DevOps-oriented automation testing demand in automotive, financial services, government & public sectors, and telecom sectors. GMInsights team also highlights that many market players are stressing more about developing automation testing platforms based on Agile and DevOps methodologies for competitive advantages.

Agile and DevOps have indeed been a backbone for continuous testing.

To implement continuous testing in DevOps practices effectively, every software team should emphasize the importance of DevOps in test automation since it plays a key role in the DevOps process. Finding the best opportunities to replace manual testing methods with automation is a must. Since many portray automation testing as a DevOps bottleneck, we need to automate regression testing mainly with the right continuous testing strategy.

Tools such as Selenium and Cypress have regularly updated with an eye on the latest market trends. Take a look at our list of best automation testing tools in the market.

API and Services Test Automation

It’s a recent trend to decouple the server and the client for mobile and web applications. We reuse API and services in more than a single component or application. All these changes would require you to test API and services independently from the app they use.

When we use API and services across different client applications and components, we should test them rather than the client. We have a huge need for API testing and service test automation. Hence, it must use the right API testing tool to perform API test automation.

Artificial Intelligence for Testing

Even though using the approaches involved in AI and ML has been practiced for ages, recent days have proven to be the golden age for software testing with the implementation of the latest AI/ML technologies. The AI/ML application in testing is currently in its early stages. These algorithms function well to write better test cases and generate test data, test scripts, and test reports.

With predictive models, you can know and decide when and how to test your data, which is the core principle of test orchestration. Let’s wait for more AI/ML applications in testing for quality prediction, bug tracking, smart visual UI testing, prioritization of test cases, bug classification, and much more.

Mobile Test Automation

The mobile app testing trends are growing continuously, and so are mobile-optimized website and web app testing trends. For supporting DevOps 100%, mobile automation testing should always play a role in DevOps toolchains. Optimizing your website and web app for your mobile device is a test. You shouldn’t fail to test them using the right mobile app testing tools.

Cross Browser testing
Online cross browser testing has revolutionized how you test your website or web app. It’s not a cakewalk when you want to test your website manually with emulators and simulators. Do you need proof? Here is a comparison of emulator vs simulator vs real device. Depending upon online browser emulators like Android SDK and simulators like Apple Xcode would make it difficult for testers since you need to code manually and follow many processes.

To test your website on different browsers, OS, and devices on these emulators, you should write the test script, inject it and run the tests. No more fussy processes! With the help of live testing, anybody can test their website within a few steps. No need to code or write test scripts!

Conduct Real Device Testing

Testing on emulators and simulators has its cons, such as the inability to mimic or simulate a real-time environment, lack of Bluetooth support, battery consumption monitoring, etc. That’s where cloud testing comes into play. With real device cloud testing, you can test your websites and apps to simulate or mimic real-time circumstances such as controls and gestures. You can test your website for reliability, compatibility, and scalability. This can also improve your testing speed. Needless to say, this will improve the test cycle speed.

Integration of Tools and Activities

Communication gap would occur when you aren’t integrating your website testing tool with other applications. Every software team should integrate the needed tools they use for development activities and phases. For example, automation testing tools like LambdaTest integrate with over 120+ platforms. The notable one is the integration of LambdaTest with JIRA, Slack, and ASANA.

Screenshot testing

Nobody wants to go through a vicious test cycle where they expect a certain test result but receive something else in return. Communicating the bug to the developer on what you expected and received is a lot of work.

Why not make use of automated browser screenshot testing? You can easily capture the screenshots from a single URL. You can easily compare this with the actual and expected results.

Responsiveness testing
It’s a must to test how your website responds to different network conditions, resolution, gestures, and so on. As we know, a single-second page response delay can bring down 7% of conversions. Around 40% of website visitors wouldn’t return if the website loading time exceeded three seconds. Keeping all these facts in mind, we must conduct responsive testing without fail.

How to perform website testing?

You can perform website testing in two major ways: manual and automated. It’s tiresome to manually check your website, given the number of factors you need to consider to test it. When you consider physical device vs real device cloud testing, the winner is real device testing in most cases.

How to perform real-time testing and real device testing? That’s where LambdaTest comes to your aid!

LambdaTest is a cross browser testing platform that allows you to test your website on 3000+ browsers, devices, hardware configuration, and OS. With LambdaTest, you can perform automated browser testing on a more secure, scalable, and reliable automation cloud platform.

What’s more? You can easily perform real time testing, real device cloud testing, automation testing, screenshot testing, visual UI testing, and responsiveness testing with LambdaTest.

Real Time Testing using LambdaTest

Test your sites for compatibility across different browsers and operating systems to ensure your customers have the best experience possible using the real time online browser testing feature provided by LambdaTest.

Here are the top three steps to perform real time testing:

Step 1: Go to LambdaTest and login. If you are new (Welcome!), sign up for free.

Step 2: Go to the Browser Testing option to enter the URL. Enter the needed details such as BRAND, DEVICE/OS, RESOLUTION, etc. Now, click START.

Step 3: Now, you can see the launched cloud-based emulator/simulator to perform website testing.

Real Device Testing using LambdaTest

LambdaTest provides a wide range of real devices to support your development processes. You can test your applications on our real devices and get a great end-user experience.

Here are the four easy steps for real device testing:

Step 1: Login to LambdaTest by entering your credentials.

Step 2: Select Real Device from the left panel. Choose Real Time for conducting real time website testing.

Step 3: Select Browser Testing. You can provide the URL later when you start the session. Click START after providing the BROWSER, DEVICE TYPE, and DEVICE/OS.

Step 4: The website you want to test would open on your cloud-based real device launched by LambdaTest. Time to test!

Automation Testing using LambdaTest

With the LambdaTest cloud grid, you can get instant on-demand access to 3000+ desktop and mobile environments to run Selenium, Cypress, Puppeteer, Playwright, and Appium automation tests on reliable, scalable, and secure cloud-based infrastructure.

Here are the steps to perform automation testing on the LambdaTest platform.

Step 1: Sign up or Log in to your LambdaTest account.

Step 2: You can click the Automation tab in the left navigation, which allows the following options: Builds, Test Archive, Analytics.

Step 3: You can select the language of your choice and must configure the environment as per it. For example, for Java, you can configure the required details as given below.

Screenshot Testing using LambdaTest

LambdaTest allows you to take screenshots of your website or web applications in a single click.

Here are the steps to perform screenshot testing on the LambdaTest platform.

Step 1: Visit the LambdaTest platform.

Step 2: From More Tools, choose Screenshot in the left panel.

Step 3: Provide the URL to test. Choose the browser version for comparing different screenshots.

Step 4: It’s time for you to download and compare the screenshots.

Visual UI Testing using LambdaTest

Sometimes, we might miss out on a petty visual bug when we test in haste. With UI comparison, you can check how your web page looks and automatically get the data on errors without any manual processes. It’s as simple as this:

Here are the steps to perform Smart Visual UI testing on LambdaTest (assuming you are already on the Dashboard):

Step 1: Go to More Tools -> UI Comparison

Step 2: Provide the images you want to compare with the baseline image.

Step 3: Take a look at the difference. Compare it with the expected results.

Responsive Testing using LambdaTest

With responsive testing, you can see the website’s mobile view on various Android and iOS resolutions. You can also perform website testing on different pre-installed mobile device viewports.

You can follow the below steps to perform responsive testing on LambdaTest (assuming you are already on the Dashboard):

Step 1: Go to More Tools -> Responsive

Step 2: Provide the URL of your choice. Choose the device name and resolution of your choice to test. Click Generate. You can also use the Mark as Bug feature to mark the defects and bugs and report them.

Responsive Testing using LT Browser

LT Browser is our mobile-friendly test tool for checking the website’s responsiveness.

Test your website on major devices with the needed viewports. Type the URL and open the website in the LT Browser platform to test responsiveness across 50+ pre-installed device viewports.

This is how you can work on LT Browser from LambdaTest (assuming you are already on the Dashboard):

Step 1: Visit More Tools-> LT Browser. Download LT Browser For Windows. Click on Download Now.

Step 2: You can install LT Browser.

Step 3: Install LT Browser. To perform website testing, provide the URL on your tab. Next, select the device for testing your website.

Step 4: All done! You can also test two devices simultaneously. Click on the three-dotted lines at the top right corner. Select the New tab.

Step 5: Choose the desired device configuration or add your custom device by entering the user agent details.

Step 6: You can also test two devices simultaneously.

**Step 7: **Click on the camera icon to take screenshots. Compare the test results with the expected results.

Step 8: You can rotate the device by clicking on the Rotate icon to check how your website would respond.

Step 9: Click on the Debug icon to debug your website. You get access to Chrome Dev Tools.

Step 10: To check how your website responds to different network speeds, choose Network Throttling. Choose the network speed you need.

Step 11: Do you want to record how your website performs at different speeds? You can use the Video Recording option.

All these processes will hasten up your test cycle.

Conclusion

With increased websites and web apps, you would always have to test them under different conditions.

I hope you have found our web testing guide useful! You can always depend upon an online browser farm to test your websites and web apps under different browsers, OS, and devices. With the increase in cloud testing, LambdaTest users are gearing towards an advanced phase of web testing.

It’s always best to depend upon a website testing checklist and a top-class cross-browser compatibility testing tool to fulfill your web testing needs. LambdaTest is the name you can always trust!

Happy testing!

A Quick Guide To Chrome Compatibility Mode

aamritaangappa — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 08:42:00 +0000

We often leverage web browsers to access different web content. It’s inevitable that the browser plays a key role in determining the depth of user experience. Thanks to the advent of browsers, there has been an upward trend in the usage of apps, extensions, and plugins.

Since there has been quite an increase in the devices and brands, we are having a tough time determining the right browser to use. It’s common for users to get muddled when they want to find the right browser compatibility. This is why its popularity is soaring high. Hence everyone should know how to activate compatibility mode in browsers.

In this new blog, let’s learn what Chrome compatibility mode is, why you need to enable it, how to get it done, and how to easily fix Chrome compatibility mode bugs. We will also explore how LambdaTest is gearing high in this domain.

So, let’s get started!

What is Chrome Compatibility Mode?

With the incredible growth of online web browsers, the technological rise is inevitable. Hence, web designers and developers should ensure that the websites they create are compatible with the latest tech stacks.

Google Chrome has a feature where you can enable Chrome compatibility mode to experience the older versions of your current browser with fewer restrictions and more accessibility to more data available on the Internet. With Chrome compatibility mode, the user can take care of the aesthetic appeal of a website, like leveraging the previous Internet Explorer version.

When a website consists of “active mixed content” successfully loaded into an HTTP page, there will be a blockage from the browser to prevent exploitation. They have designed this feature to safeguard the website from losing sensitive page information. This will also ensure that the online browser testing is a success.

Also, If you want to know all about Regression Testing check here!

Do you know?

So far, Chrome consists of 10 billion+ lifetime installs.

Chrome has a market share of 65.87%. Safari, Edge, and Firefox follow it.

Google Chrome has more than 130,000 extensions. This number could exceed if we include Chrome apps with 188,620 extensions as of August 2019. Unfortunately, Google has ceased to support it.
Here is the Market share by top mobile internet browsers worldwide, starting from January 2012 to December 2021, with Google Chrome topping the list with a 70% share.

When we watch all these stats, it has become inevitable that we should know more about Chrome compatibility mode and how to enable it. This is to ensure that the web experience meets our expectations.

Enabling Chrome Compatibility Mode

When we speak about Chrome compatibility mode, you must try it while experiencing problems frequently with the current Google Chrome version on the desktop. With a compatibility mode warning, you can know that you have loaded an insecure website into your editor. It would also detect when the mixed content gets blocked. You can also access restriction-less internet surfing this way.

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How to enable Chrome Compatibility Mode?

Here is the step-by-step procedure for enabling Chrome compatibility mode on your system.

Step 1: Locate your system’s Google Chrome destination folder to enable Chrome compatibility mode.

Step 2: Right-click the Chrome icon and click Properties.

Step 3: Navigate directly to the Compatibility tab in the top corner next to Shortcut.

Step 4: Choose the OS you currently use from the dropdown box by ticking the checkbox “Run this program in compatibility mode for:”

Step 5: Click Apply and **OK **to enable Chrome compatibility mode on your PC.

Since you enabled Chrome compatibility mode, you can now easily get access to the older version of Chrome for browsing various sites.

How to troubleshoot in Chrome Compatibility Mode?

Troubleshooting a compatibility issue in Chrome requires the usage of the “Compatibility Mode” option. This feature allows users to access web applications and websites that Chrome does not support, but only if they are in the Compatibility View list.

To begin, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Follow the above-mentioned steps to enable Chrome compatibility mode.

Step 2: Click on Run compatibility troubleshooter.

Step 3: Choose Troubleshoot program.

Step 4: Choose the problem you are currently facing from the checkbox.

Step 5: Choose the Windows version on which the program was working before.

Step 6: Now, you need to test compatibility settings for the program. Click on Test the program.

Step 7: Cross-check once before clicking on Next. Go to the desired page.

Step 8: Once you complete troubleshooting, you need to confirm that the problem has been fixed. Click on Yes, save these settings for this program.

Step 9: You will get confirmation that the issue has been fixed. Click Close.

What are the other ways to troubleshoot the program?

Chrome has offered us abundant ways to troubleshoot the program. Many of them can be fixed within a few steps.

Solve Aw, Snap! Error

When you test on Chrome 84 browser online or any other version, it’s annoying when we want to load a page, and we get to see this Aw, Snap! Error. Try these methods to get rid of it:

Clear the entire chrome browser cache.
Update the latest version of Google Chrome.
Completely reset your Chrome settings.
Disable your VPN settings.
Consider re-installing Google Chrome.
Check quickly to know if it’s an ERR_NETWORK_CHANGED issue or otherwise.

UserAgent Detection

The code snippet may assume every browser as IE. The code fork may fail if the code snippet does so since many other browsers would show similar behavior. The best solution would be to try another browser version when you get a message that the browser is unsupported. Look for the “appleWebKit” string in your navigator to confirm that the browser leverages WebKit. You can learn more about it in our earlier blog on CSS with feature detection.

Use Browser-Specific CSS

When a few browser-specific CSS styling techniques wouldn’t be compatible with Chrome, you need to look for an alternate option. Though they may seem to be working fine, avoiding using them when you handle non-critical tasks is better.

Instead of using document.all as a part of JavaScript, leverage document.getElementById(). This feature would be an outdated Google Chrome addition with support for every modern browser.
Skip using CSS expressions compatible with only Opera to avoid rejection.

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Get Error-less Plugin Logs

Different browsers would make use of different plugin types. For instance, Google Chrome uses only Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface API (NPAPI). When you miss the plugins such as Windows Media Player movies or Flash videos on Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, ensure that the parameters in the < embed > and < object > tags are the same to prevent confusion.

When you make use of plug-ins where the support is only offered for Active-X version, it’s not going to work in many browsers such as Google Chrome without using the IE rendering engine. IE would also use the object tag for embedding a flash video. Then, it would load the file flash_ad.swf while ignoring the browser’s embed tags.

Accuracy in Page Encryption

If you don’t properly define the character encoding, it would surely affect the way various browsers interpret your message. Your page would surely appear distorted when you view it on Google Chrome. It would also display garbage characters.

To solve this, you must ensure that you correctly set the page content type. The characters you use to set the page’s content should be directly from the IANA list, with only encodings containing the desired text. Avoid conflicting values since Google Chrome gives preference to them. It’s also advisable to use UTF-8 when you face problems with legacy encoding. Don’t use Visual Hebrew encoding since it lacks logic to render text.

Breaks in Overflowing-in-Section

When a single line present in the layout of the site can get wrapped around different lines, it could cut off or overlap other elements. The issue is mainly faced when you lack pixel-perfect layouts for the browser versions. When there is a change in the website’s element and font sizes of the browser and OS version, it could lead to the text getting wrapped or cut off around different browsers.

To avoid these bottlenecks, you should avoid setting your website’s fixed pixel width the next time. You can instead use dynamically-sized elements. You must test your website in different OS and browsers to check for the maximum size.

If you are interested in learning about cross browser compatibility, look at our cross browser compatibility tutorial and another course on cross browser testing.

How to use LambdaTest to test Chrome Compatibility?

When you use cross browser testing tools such as LambdaTest, you can check for the website compatibility with different browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer and Opera. You can also check out our list of desktops and browsers supported by us.

Performing live interactive cross browser testing of both locally hosted and public websites has become simpler on an online browser farm of 3000+ real desktop and mobile browsers, OS, and devices that run on the real operating system. It’s simple and quick! You can get it done in three simple steps.

Step 1: Signup and login to LambdaTest.

Step 2: Go to Real Time Testing -> Browser Testing. Choose Chrome as the desired browser.

Step 3: Click START. You will get the real-time browser version of the web page you want to test.

You can also go through the following video to learn how to perform real time Chrome compatibility testing on the LambdaTest platform:

You can also use our Real device cloud feature to test your browser on real devices.

Step 1: Signup and login to LambdaTest.

Step 2: Go to Real Device -> Real Time -> Browser Testing. Choose Chrome among the Browser options.

**Step 3: **You can directly check for browser compatibility on your mobile device.

You can also use LambdaTest Chrome extension while testing your website on Chrome. By ensuring that your website is compatible with different browsers, you can stay assured that your website experience will match the standard expectations.

You can also go through the following video to learn how to perform real device Chrome compatibility testing on the LambdaTest platform:

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel if you want to dive deeper into responsiveness testing, web UI testing, cross browser compatibility, and get the best insights on how to test Chrome compatibility.

Conclusion

With a cloud-based online device farm such as LambdaTest, you can quickly test your website for Chrome Compatibility without any long and tedious manual processes and grab a cup of coffee (or tea or mojito). It’s always better to depend upon such exclusive testing solutions when you want to quickly wrap up the testing process.

Happy testing!

The Most Comprehensive Selenium Locators Cheat Sheet

aamritaangappa — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 03:58:00 +0000

During the development of a web-based application, there are so many test cases to be executed. For every test engineer, performing actions such as type, click, and so on is a must on the HTML elements. While performing automation testing, the test automation tool should be able to perform these operations on the HTML elements just like we interact during manual testing.

But, how does the automation tool know how to locate an HTML element to perform the needed operation? This is where the Selenium locators cheat sheet comes in handy.

Let’s explore the types of locators in Selenium in this Selenium locators tutorial.

Deep dive with us into our Selenium locators cheat sheet, specially crafted for you.

What are Selenium locators?

Selenium is a widely used test automation framework. Through Selenium, you can automate any interactions such as type, click, double click with the DOM WebElements, etc. To identify any HTML element on a web page, you must use locators. It’s a common capability in almost every UI automation tool, including Selenium.

Selenium WebDriver locators come up packed with different methodologies to identify HTML elements present on the page. Selenium offers multiple support to major web locators. Pick up the one meeting your test requirement. We have prepared this Selenium locators cheat sheet with an eye on what we need to cover without fail, to simplify your chores.

These are the types of locators in Selenium — ID, Name, ClassName, LinkText, Partial LinkText, TagName, CssSelector, and XPath.

In the next section of this Selenium locators cheat sheet, we will explore different locators in Selenium in detail.

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What are the Selenium locator types?

In this Selenium locators cheat sheet, let’s get coverage on the most important types of locators in Selenium in this section of the Selenium locators cheat sheet.

Here is the list:

LOCATOR	DESCRIPTION	SYNTAX (IN JAVA)
ID	Figure out the WebElement that uses the ID attribute	driver.findElement(By.id(“IdValue”));
Name	Figure out the WebElement with the Name attribute	driver.findElement(By.name(“nameValue”));
ClassName	Make use of the Class attribute to identify the object	driver.findElement(By.className(“classValue”));
LinkText	Leverage the text hyperlinks for locating the WebElement	driver.findElement(By.linkText(“textofLink”));
Partial LinkText	Make use of the text partially in hyperlinks for desired WebElement location	driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“PartialTextofLink”));
TagName	Make use of the TagName for locating any desired WebElement	driver.findElement(By.tagName(“htmlTag”));
CssSelector	CSS that we use to create different style rules in a web page can be used to locate any needed WebElement	driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(“cssValue”));
XPath	Bring in XPath as a WebElement locator	driver.findElement(By.xpath(“xpathValue”));

Locating web elements with the “ID” attribute

This is the first portion we are going to discuss in our Selenium locators cheat sheet. ID locator in Selenium is the most common method to locate different web page elements. W3C expects it to always be unique. With the advent of dynamic web pages, you can generate “IDs” dynamically.

Here is the syntax to locate web elements by “ID”:

driver.findElement(By.id(“IdValue”));

driver: The Selenium WebDriver from which we need to locate the web element while using the Selenium locator.
findElement: The attribute used to find the web page element.
By.id: The method used to pass the property of “IdValue”.
IdValue: Locate the web element with its Id name.

Example:

<input name="food" required="" type="radio" id="food-radio-1" class="custom-control-input" value="Menu">

driver.findElement(By.id(“food-radio-1”));

By.id(“food-radio-1”): Locate the web element with the ID “food-radio-1”.

Locating web elements with the “Name” attribute

Selenium allows us to identify any element using the “name” attribute using the Name locator in Selenium. It can have a number of elements with a similar “name” attribute. When we want to identify the web element, we should try to make it unique. Or else, it would identify a number of elements present on the same page with the same name value and choose whichever it finds first.

Here is the syntax to locate web elements by “Name”:

driver.findElement(By.name(“nameValue”));

By.name: The method used to pass the property of “Name”.
nameValue: The value of the name to be located.

Example:

<input name="food" required="" type="radio" id="food-radio-1" class="custom-control-input" value="Menu">

driver.findElement(By.name("food"));
By.name("food"): Locate the web element with the name “food”

After you read our Selenium locators cheat sheet, watch our latest tutorial to know how to interact with Selenium WebDriver web elements.

Subscribe to our LambdaTest YouTube Channel to get the latest updates on useful tutorials around Cypress testing, Selenium automation testing, and Mobile app testing tutorial.

Locating web elements with the “ClassName” attribute

The ClassName locator in Selenium can help Selenium locate DOM class values. To perform or identify any form of web element operation involving the “className” attribute, we use class.

Here is the syntax to locate web elements by “ClassName”:

driver.findElement(By.className(“classValue”));

By.className: The method used to pass the “className” locator.
classValue: Locate the class with the specific class name.

Example:

Let’s say that the following snippet consists of the entire form for an event:

<div class="registration-form-wrapper">

The class attribute value can be used for form identification. For identifying the same on our webpage, the following syntax can come in handy:

driver.findElement(By.className("registration-form-wrapper"));

By.className("registration-form-wrapper"): Locate the web element with the class name “registration-form-wrapper”

We need to use a unique class name to locate the web element. If anything else consists of this class name, Selenium will consider that instead of the web element you need to consider.

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Locating web elements with the “partialLinkText” and “LinkText” attribute

partialLinkText and LinkText locators in Selenium have the same functionalities. They let you locate different web elements with hyperlink texts. We can use them to handle elements with the anchor < a> tags. With reference to different Selenium locator strategies, when we have various hyperlinks with the exact text on the web page, Selenium would go on to choose the one that appears first.

Here is the syntax to locate a web element with the “partialLinkText” and “LinkText” attribute:

driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText(“PartialTextofLink”));

By.partialLinkText– Partial link text locator lets you identify the elements by using the partial link text.

driver.findElement(By.LinkText(“LinkText”));
By.LinkText– Identify the elements by just the link text.

Example:

Let’s say that the anchor element consists of the following attributes and properties:

<a id="Link1" href="https://www.lambdatest.com" target="_blank">Landingpage</a>

To identify the elements with the partialLinkText or LinkText, the hyperlink text is a must:

driver.findElement(By.linkText("Landingpage"));

By.linkText("Landingpage"): The hyperlink text used to identify the elements.

With the partialLinkText, you can identify the elements by using just the part of the link text.

driver.findElement(By.partialLinkText("Land"));

By.partialLinkText("Land"): Part of the link text “Landingpage”.

Locating web elements with the “TagName” attribute

The TagName locator in Selenium can use HTML tag names such as div, button, ***input, anchor tag, and so on to identify web page elements.

Here is the syntax for find the elements with the tagName:

driver.findElement(By.tagName(“htmlTag”));

By.tagName: The tagName locator is used to find the web element with the particular tag name.
htmlTag: The tag name used to identify the elements.

Example:

By.tagName("a");

("a"): The tagName locator returns all the elements from the page that contains a specified tag “a”.

Locating web elements with the “CssSelector” attribute

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used widely to style different webpages. The majority of the web pages are of dynamic design. Hence it’s quite tough to get a name, class, or unique id for locating different elements. CSS Selectors in Selenium could act as the best alternative since they are quite faster in comparison to different types of locators in Selenium. You can further deep-dive into it by going through the CSS Selector Cheat Sheet once you finish reading our Selenium locators cheat sheet.

Here is the syntax to identify a web element with CssSelector:

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(“cssValue”));

By.cssSelector: The CssSelector locator is used to find the element using CSS Selector.
cssValue: The attribute used to define the value of the CSS Selector.

Example:

Let’s consider that the input element consists of the following:

<input autocomplete="off" placeholder="Name" type="text" id="userName" class=" registration-form">

For finding the element with the CSS selector, here is the code:

By.cssSelector("input[id= ‘userName’]");

By.cssSelector: Method used to locate the web elements using CSS Selectors.
input[id= ‘userName’]: Value of the CSS Selector.
Input: Property used to define the ID value of the CSS Selector.
Id: Attribute used to input the ID value for defining various CSS locators
userName: Name of the CSS locator.

Let’s take a look at the various CSS Selector attribute types in our Selenium locators cheat sheet.

Tag and ID in CSS Selector

To locate elements by ID and Tag, you have to use the following components in Selenium locator:

Syntax:

css=(Html tag)(#)(ID attribute value)

Html tag: Get the tag you want to locate (e.g., input tag).
#: Get the ID attribute. We use it specifically to locate any element through an ID.
ID attribute value: Input the ID attribute value when you want to locate the element.

This is similar to Tag and ID in the CSS locator, except that you use a dot (.) to denote the class attribute value instead of hash (#).

Syntax:

css=(HTML tag)(.)(Class attribute value)

Class attribute value: Value of the attribute class

Tag and Attribute in CSS Selector

This is one among the types of locators in Selenium where you can locate the element through tag name and define the attribute with its value. The Selenium driver will select the first one when multiple elements have the same attribute and tag.

Syntax:

css=(HTML Page)[Attribute=Value]

Attribute=Value: Define the attribute by providing its value.

Tag, Attribute, and Class in CSS Selector

Through these types of locators in Selenium, you can locate the element through class name and different attribute values.

Syntax:

css=(HTML tag>)(. )(Class attribute value)([attribute=Value of attribute])

HTML Tag: Used to define the tag name.
Class attribute value: Used to define the value of the class attribute.
attribute=Value of attribute: Used to mention the exact value of the attribute.

Wild card (*, ^ and $) in CSS for classes

Selenium CSS selector can help you match multiple strings via different patterns such as ^, *, and $. We use CSS wildcard selectors to select different elements on a simultaneous basis.

Let’s take you through how to use wildcards with the Selenium CSS Selector in our Selenium locators cheat sheet:

a. Starts-With in CSS Selector

Among many types of locators in Selenium, this Selenium locator helps you locate elements when you try to match different elements using a string starting with any designated value.

Syntax:

css=(HTML tag)([attribute^=value])

[attribute^=value]: Used to select or locate any desired WebElement with a string starting with the specified value.

b. Ends-With in CSS Selector

This Selenium locator helps you locate elements when you try to match different elements using a string ending with any designated value.

Syntax:

css=(HTML tag)([attribute$=end of the string])

[attribute$=end of the string]: Used to locate the element through CSS Selector by defining the attribute value based on the ending value of the string.

c. Contains in CSS Selector

Locate different elements when you want to match various elements with a string consisting of a set value.

Syntax:

css=(HTML tag)([attribute*=partial string])

[attribute*=partial string]: Used to locate the element through Contains in CSS Selector by defining the attribute value based on the partial value of the string.

d. Child Elements in CSS Selector

We use this Selenium locator to locate an element present inside another element.

Syntax:

css= tagname.class name li:nth-of-child

Li:nth-of-child: Index of the referenced child element in CSS selector.

Selenium relative locators

Our Selenium locators cheat sheet would be incomplete without talking about the Selenium relative locators. A major feature of Selenium 4 is relative locators. This helps you search different WebElements which you can relate to different elements. Here is the list of Selenium 4 relative locators:


SELENIUM 4 LOCATORS	DESCRIPTION	SYNTAX (IN JAVA)
above	The needed WebElement is found to be above the mentioned element.	driver.findElement(with(By.tagName(“TagName”))
.above(ElementName));
below	The needed WebElement is found to be below the mentioned element.	driver.findElement(with(By.tagName(“TagName”))
.below(ElementName));
toLeftOf	The needed WebElement is found to be on the left of a specific element.	driver.findElement(with(By.tagName(“TagName”))
.toLeftOf(ElementName));
toRightOf	The needed WebElement is present on the right of a specific element.	driver.findElement(with(By.tagName(“TagName”))
near	The needed WebElement (or item) is present not more than 50 pixels away from the mentioned element.	driver.findElement(with(By.tagName(“TagName”))

Locating web elements with the “XPath” attribute

Let’s explore XPath, an important attribute, in this Selenium locators cheat sheet. XPath locators in Selenium are unique among the types of locators present to find web elements. XPath makes use of the XML expression for locating a webpage element. It’s a must to locate dynamic webpage elements, just like CSS selectors. XPath simplifies it when the properties are dynamic.

Here is the syntax to identify a web element with the XPath locator:

driver.findElement(By.xpath(“htmlTag”));

XPath: XPath (XML Expression) belonging to the DOM structure.
htmlTag: The needed attribute of the target element to identify any unique web element.

Example:

By.xpath("By.id(“userName”));

By.xpath: XML expression to locate the element of the webpage.
id: ID value
By.id(“userName”): The attribute to identify the web element under the ‘userName’.

There are many types of XPath locators:

Standard XPath: This is the standard way through which you can write the XPath locator.
XPath Contains: XPath uses CSS selector ‘contains’ to locate WebElements where the value changes dynamically.

//tagname[contains(@attribute, ‘partial value of attribute’)]
XPath using ‘AND’ & ‘OR’: In these types of locators in Selenium, we use ‘OR’ and ‘AND’ operators as a part of the Selenium XPath selector when we want to locate a WebElement on the basis of a certain set of conditions. Both the conditions have to be True for ‘AND’.

//input[@id='login_1' OR @name='login’]

Syntax of XPath AND operator:

//input[[@id](http://twitter.com/id)='login_1' AND [@name](http://twitter.com/name)='login’]

starts-with() method in XPath: The XPath Selenium locator starts-with() method provides functionalities that’s similar to Selenium CSS Selector. This can help you locate different elements, starting with a specific attribute value. We can use the XPath starts-with() method to locate WebElements where the values would change when we refresh the page.

Syntax for starts-with() method:

//tagname[starts-with([@attribute](http://twitter.com/attribute),'starting name of the attribute value')]

XPath Text: Selenium XPath Text locator can help us locate WebElements through XPath when it uses an exact text match. We can use it to locate elements when we look into all the tags that contain a certain level of text.

Syntax:

//div[text()='Logged In']

Different locator strategies to identify different web elements

We couldn’t skip this part while drafting our Selenium locators cheat sheet, since it’s a must to identify which strategy would suit you the most.

findBy: Mention the strategy to locate the objects for any WebElement or a set of WebElements. It’s of two types: findElement and findElements.

The web app interaction would need the Selenium driver to locate different web elements on the page. When it fails to identify the element correctly, you cannot trigger different events like enter, send, or click. These are the methods to find one or more web elements:

findElement: Find a single web element and return it based on the locator’s search needs.
findElements: Find every web element and return it based on the locator’s search needs.

Go through our XPath Locators Cheat sheet to understand the XPath fundamentals in Selenium, once you are done with our Selenium locators cheat sheet.

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Best Practices for using Selenium Locators

In this section on Selenium locators cheat sheet, let’s look at the below points when you want to identify elements through Selenium locators:

Choose the right Selenium locator to recognize a web element in Selenium.
Avoid using dynamic attribute values to locate different elements in the Selenium locator.
Use ID and name attributes when your web page contains a unique set instead of XPath for a speedy process.
When using locators, ensure that the locator points directly to the needed element.
Avoid anything that causes breakage in the script, such as using auto-generated elements since we generate element attribute properties at a run time in a dynamic web environment.
When using CSS or XPath locators, avoid using those generated by the Chrome Dev Tools. This leads to code breakage, maintenance, and reliability issues
Always keep your locators short of identifying them easily.

You can always come back to our Selenium locators cheat sheet and other resource materials on Selenium mentioned in LambdaTest learning hub for better updates on different topics related to Responsive testing, Cross-browser compatibility and much more.

Conclusion

Selenium locators cheat sheet can be handy when performing Selenium automation testing. Automation testing platforms like LambdaTest offer an online Selenium Grid that lets you perform end-to-end automation testing across a browser farm of 3000+ real browsers and operating systems.

Use this Selenium locators cheat sheet to identify a web element quickly using the right locators and relative locators. Among the different types of locators in Selenium, you need to choose which one would fit your scenario.

Hope you found our Selenium locators cheat sheet useful!

30 Top Automation Testing Tools In 2022

aamritaangappa — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 12:14:00 +0000

The sky’s the limit (and even beyond that) when you want to run test automation. Technology has developed so much that you can reduce time and stay more productive than you used to 10 years ago. You needn’t put up with the limitations brought to you by Selenium if that’s your go-to automation testing tool. Instead, you can pick from various test automation frameworks and tools to write effective test cases and run them successfully.

In this article, let’s explore how to cherry pick the right automation testing tool for your business and delve deeper into the top automation testing tools available in the market in 2022.

How to choose the right automation testing tool?

Choosing the best automation testing tool for your business could be challenging if you aren’t aware of the pros and cons of each of them. First, you must consider the business requirements and needs and analyze them thoroughly before making the final decision.

Before analyzing the result, you need to look into the key criteria it has to satisfy. You can also use the Pugh Matrix technique to formulate the top criterium. You could be using Selenium or Appium or any other automation testing tool currently, so why not choose it as a benchmark? After that, you need to analyze the pros and cons of the current tool and compare it with a few shortlisted tools.

In the below section, we have provided an example of Selenium with its advantages and disadvantages to help you understand what common factors you need to zoom in on while picking up an automation testing tool.

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Top automation testing tools to rely upon in 2022

Even though there are plenty of automation testing tools available in the market, your unique business case might call for a particular automation testing tool with the right features and solutions.

Here is a list of the best automation testing tools you can use for your business based on your test project:

Selenium

Selenium is an open-source automation testing tool to test different web applications. It’s widely used by Quality Analysts across the globe, thanks to its customizable test automation availability over many languages and browsers.

Even though Selenium acts as a prima facie option for automation testing, we need to be open to other frameworks and tools that can make our lives easier.

What are the pros and cons of Selenium?

As I said, Selenium can benefit everyone, from junior testers to test leads, when they want to carry out test automation. However, we can’t ignore the advantages and disadvantages of the Selenium tool. Here are its pros and cons:

Advantages of Selenium:

It’s forever open-source

The open-source nature of Selenium makes it available for free for anyone to download and use. It is also highly customizable, which allows companies to adopt and adapt the tool according to their specific needs. Moreover, hundreds of open-source libraries are available to automate various Selenium tests.

Supports different programming languages

Selenium supports multiple programming languages, which means you can use it to test with different programming environments. For example, your team might use Java for some projects and PHP for others, but you can use Selenium to test both.

Supports various browsers and operating systems

Selenium allows you to perform seamless test automation in different browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. This becomes highly useful while executing tests across various browsers simultaneously. Selenium supports a wide variety of Operating Systems (OS), including Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX. With Selenium’s customization and automation tools, product testers can create multi-OS test suites that can be executed on any OS.

Supports different devices

Can be implemented to automate the mobile web application on different platforms like Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.

Parallel test execution support

To reduce the overall execution time, you can use the Selenium Grid to perform parallel testing. This not only saves you time but also improves productivity among your team.

Disadvantages of Selenium:

Support is limited to only Web-based applications

Selenium might be a go-to framework for testing web applications. But it doesn’t cover desktop apps, native mobile apps, and hybrid apps.

It’s quite challenging to set up the test environment

Even though Selenium uses several plug-ins and tools to support test automation, manual configuration is a step you cannot skip while using them. It takes a lot of time and expertise to get it done correctly.

No Test Tool integration for Test Management

Selenium lacks built-in tools to support project/test management tasks. This leads to a communication gap between the developers and testers.

No built-in reporting mechanism

It’s also hard to generate test reports when you test using Selenium, and you have to depend on other frameworks like TestNG or JUnit to generate them.

It lacks technical support

This is a common problem when you rely upon open-source tools. Tech support wouldn’t be as expected as you can relate to paid tools.

Also, check Escape JSON- JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a popular method of data interchange. This tool escapes special characters in JSON files.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross browser testing platform where you can fasten your release speed with high-end test automation on the cloud. It supports a wide range of frameworks and tools integration for web testing and app test automation, such as Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Puppeteer, Taiko, Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, and so on.

Running your test scripts on the test execution platform is a breeze. With all these features of LambdaTest, you can bring down the test execution time in a better way. You can also track the issues and sort them out. You can get it done in 3 simple steps.

Step 1: Log in to the LambdaTest platform. Don’t have a LambdaTest account, sign up for free.

Step 2: Choose the Automation option from the side panel.

You can view every detail of the automation test, such as build sessions, passed tests, failed tests, errors, timeout, and much more.

What makes LambdaTest one of the top automation testing tools?

Access to an online browser farm of **3000+ browsers and operating systems environments **for cross-browser compatibility testing.
Say no to flaky test results with better hardware reliability.
SOC2 Type2 certified and GDPR compliant.
Get accurate and automated reports downloadable in different formats.
Check for progress using a real-time dashboard and know what your teammates are up to with project management tool integration.
Integrate with 200+ tools that deal with project management and so on.

Here is a short snap on how you can run automation tests using LambdaTest:

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel when you want to catch up with the latest news on automated browser testing, automated UI testing, etc.

Cypress

Cypress is a new test automation tool for front-end developers. Written in JavaScript and built on top of WebDriver and Node.js, Cypress tests run in any modern browser. It’s fast, reliable, and simple to use. Cypress is also open source.

If you are planning to move from Selenium to Cypress testing, do check out the Selenium vs Cypress comparison to make an informed decision. When writing this blog, Cypress has 2.4k Fork and 39.3k Star on GitHub.

What makes Cypress one of the top automation testing tools?

Installing Cypress is simple, with no extra dependencies required.
It offers real-time support where you can write the test when the application is being built.
Say goodbye to network lags and real-time reloads where you can automatically trigger and run your test once you save it.
You can easily get the test snapshots right from the command log.

Watch this video to learn how to run Cypress tests in headless mode differently.

Playwright

Playwright framework, a test automation library developed proudly by Microsoft’s contributors, is another open-source favorite among a large audience. It uses a NodeJS library for automating Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit browsers using a single API. Similar to Cypress, it comes with Apache 2.0 license, supporting a wide range of programming languages, including C#, Java, NodeJS, and Python.

You can use it to perform Playwright testing along with NodeJS using JavaScript or TypeScript. Playwright has 1.8k Fork and 39.7k Star on GitHub when writing this blog. You can go through this blog on Playwright Framework if you are planning to get started with Playwright.

What makes Playwright one of the top automation testing tools?

It’s quite easy to configure and set up.
Get multi-browser support such as Firefox, Edge, Chrome, and Safari.
It’s backed up with the support of C#, Java, Javascript/Typescript, and Python.
Enable the capabilities of parallel browser testing.
Make the most out of multiple browsers/tabs.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is nothing but a Node library offering high-level API in case you want to control Chromium or headless Chrome with the DevTools Protocol. When performing Puppeteer testing, every programmer can easily interact with any web browser using methods such as .type() or .goto(). The maintenance is taken care of by the Chrome DevTools team. This is also a browser-driven framework.

When writing this blog, Puppeteer has 8.5k Fork and 78.8k Star on GitHub.

What makes Puppeteer one of the top automation testing tools?

Get thorough Chrome support.
Automate UI testing, form submission, keyboard input, etc.
Access web scraping to extract content and data immediately.
Conduct screenshot testing and save PDFs of pages.
Measure load time via the Chrome Performance Analysis tool.

Taiko

Built by ThoughtWorks, Taiko is a free-to-use, open-source tool for automated browser testing. It makes use of the Node.js library for automating the Chrome browser. With Taiko, you can easily create more readable and maintainable JavaScript tests. Leverage a simple API alongside implicit waits and smart selectors. If you are looking for a simpler and scalable option, you can add a plugin to run Taiko tests on the LambdaTest platform.

What makes Taiko one of the top automation testing tools?

Get rid of flaky tests and get clear test results.
Install easily within a few minutes.
Use an interactive recorder to record the bugs.
Manage dynamic content and XHR.
Get features such as Request/Response mocking and stubbing.
Get platform-friendly features with Linux, macOS, and Windows support.

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Appium

Appium, an open-source test automation tool, is commonly used to test native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. It would drive Android, iOS, and Windows apps that use the WebDriver protocol. The basic idea behind the screens of Appium is when you test a native app, it shouldn’t involve an SDK or app recompilation, whereas your choice of test frameworks, practices, and tools should play a key role while performing Appium mobile testing.

What makes Appium one of the top automation testing tools?

Use the tool of your choice, dev tools, or programming language.
It’s quite easy to set up.
Get parallel execution of test script.
You wouldn’t need to include any extra agents in the app to make Appium automation compatible.

Espresso

Leverage Espresso when you want to write simple, reliable, and concise Android UI tests. With Espresso API, test authors can think and work the same way a user would when they interact with the app when they want to locate UI elements and interact with them.

This framework would also halt direct access to app activities and views since flakiness occurs when you hold on to the objects and operate them off the UI thread. Hence you wouldn’t see any methods such as getCurrentActivity() and getView() in the Espresso API. It’s possible to implement your ViewAssertion and ViewAction subclasses.

What makes Espresso one of the top automation testing tools?

The core API is extremely predictable, small, customizable, and simple to learn.
Espresso tests would clearly state interactions, expectations, and assertions with no boilerplate content distraction, customized infrastructure, or unnecessary implementation details.
Espresso tests would run extremely fast! You can leave the syncs, waits, polls, and sleeps and let it manipulate and assert the UI application while under rest.

XCUITest

App UI testing, a part of mobile app testing, would involve looking at the behavior of the interface while performing user actions and comparing the actual results with the expected results. In XCUITest, iOS app testers would try to replicate a user’s interaction with the app and validate the UI state.

XCUITest can let them write different test cases for managing these purposes with two fundamental concepts- XCTest, the base framework allowing testers to write test cases using Swift and Objective-C, and Accessibility, where QAs can test and modify the behavior of the app to check its performance when people with disabilities are using the app.

What makes XCUITest one of the top automation testing tools?

Get simple interfaces when you want to write different test cases to perform a UI action and document the actions and results.
Initially, you might need to invest more time and cost. But you can surely achieve the ROI you expected.
Expect high-end Apple community support and get your queries answered immediately.

Cucumber

Cucumber is a commonly used testing tool supporting Behavior Driven Development (BDD). Write more understandable tests with no regard to technical knowledge. As for BDD, product owners and business analysts would write acceptance tests or test scenarios to enact the system behavior from a business perspective. This is done for sign-off and review by the product owners before they can write the codes. The combination of Selenium Cucumber provides a robust framework that allows you to create functional tests easily.

What makes Cucumber one of the top automation testing tools?

Get multi-language support such as Ruby and Java.net.
Bridge the gap between the technical and business language.
Write test scripts with no coding knowledge.
Get end-to-end testing framework support.
Make use of simplified test script architecture with code reusability.

TestNG

TestNG, a multi-purpose automation testing framework, where NG stands for “Next Generation” makes the best use of annotations (@), thanks to its inspiration from JUnit. With TestNG, you can extend the UI testing into E2E testing and integration testing. Thus, TestNG facilitates easier conducting of end-to-end testing. You can go through our TestNG tutorial to learn more about this testing framework.

What makes TestNG one of the top automation testing tools?

Generate the best reports to understand how many test cases have passed, failed, or skipped.
Easily understandable and use annotations.
Get group test cases in a simplified manner.
Conduct parallel testing seamlessly.

JUnit

JUnit is one of the most popularly used unit testing frameworks. Built to improve upon JUnit 4.x, JUnit 5 is a complete rewrite that provides an extensible Java testing framework that can support many different testing styles. The goal of JUnit 5 is to provide an update that simplifies the testing process while making it easier to test in parallel and with alternative approaches like property-based testing. When you do a JUnit 5 vs TestNG comparison, you can learn about the advantages that JUnit 5 provides compared to other Java test automation frameworks.

What makes JUnit one of the top automation testing tools?

Get annotations to identify different test methods, and use test runners to run tests and assertions to test expected results.
Write faster code with high-end quality.
It’s simple to use and consumes less time.
Run automatic JUnit tests and get immediate feedback.
Organize the tests into test suites with test cases and different test suites
Get alerts when the test passes or fails.

Jest

Jest, a simple-to-use JavaScript automation testing framework, can easily collaborate with a gang of web and mobile app development frameworks, including Node, Babel, Vue, TypeScript, React, and so on. What makes it special? It requires Zero configuration. Jest focuses on making installation and configuration simpler in most JavaScript projects.

Write tests while tracking large objects easily. Get live snapshots along the tests or through inline embedment. You can run parallel tests as you need for higher performance. Moreover, Jest consists of an all-in-one toolkit for enhanced performance. Leverage mocked imports and the rich Mock Functions API for spying on different function calls using readable test syntax.

What makes Jest one of the top automation testing tools?

It’s quite fast and safe since it gives preference to failed tests while reorganizing runs based on the time taken for the test files.
Generate better code coverage as soon as you add the flag –coverage from the untested files. No need for any additional setup.
Make use of a custom resolver to import the tests. This makes it quite simple to mock an object outside the test scope.
Get rich context on why the test has failed.

Jasmine

Jasmine is one of the best open-source testing frameworks used commonly for JavaScript. You can run it on any JavaScript-powered platform if you don’t want it to intrude on the IDE or the application. It also consists of an easy-to-read syntax. The influence of its functionality comes from its predecessors that include different unit testing frameworks such as JSpec, JSSpec, RSpec, and ScrewUnit. The key benefits include its support for asynchronous testing and leveraging ‘spies’ to implement test doubles.

What makes Jasmine one of the top automation testing tools?

It supports front-end code testing through a front-end Jasmine extension known as Jasmine-jQuery.
The syntax is quite easy-to-read, which is similar to RSpec.
Get access to a rich built-in matchers set.

Mocha

What makes Mocha one of the top automation testing tools?

Mocha.js offers functions executing in a specified order.
It also logs every result in the terminal window.
It would clean the software under test to make sure that every test case would run independently without depending on each other.
It uses the BDD interface by default.
It offers a huge stack of interfaces to define hooks, test suites and individual tests that include Exports, TSS, Require and QUnit.

Protractor

Protractor is an end-to-end automation testing tool to manage AngularJS and Angular applications. It runs different tests against the application that runs in a real browser with real-time user interaction. One of the features of Protractor is that it would execute the upcoming step automatically in the test when the webpage is done with pending tasks. This is one of the most loved features in Protractor.

Through this Selenium Protractor tutorial, you can set up Protractor for AngularJS and get started with end-to-end testing.

What makes Protractor one of the top automation testing tools?

Test how a user would do in real-time. Since Protractor has been built using WebDriverJS, it uses browser-oriented drivers and native events. This gives way to user-oriented interaction.
Protractor would support Angular-oriented locator strategies, allowing you to test Angular-oriented elements without needing any special efforts to set up.
You can avoid sleeps and waits for the test. No need to wait for the syncing of the test and webpage.

WebdriverIO

The WebdriverIO framework has been built with an objective to automate modern-age mobile and web applications. This end-to-end testing framework belongs to the OpenJS foundation. It can also test JavaScript/TypeScript NodeJS applications. We can use WebdriverIO with WebdriverProtocol since it consists of many top features such as cross browser testing.

What makes WebdriverIO one of the top automation testing tools?

Installation and Setup can be done quite easily.
It’s quite a robust, scalable, flexible, and stable framework.
Get access to community plugins and built-in tools to extend your setup as per your needs and requirements.
Get native mobile app testing support.

Robot

Robot framework is a common-purpose open-source automation framework. We can use it for both robotic process automation (RPA) and test automation.

Watch this video to learn the basics of the robot framework for automation testing. This video will give you an understanding of the various functionalities of the Robot Framework with live examples.

Endless top organizations use the Robot framework with Selenium to manage their software development tasks. It’s open-sourced, extensively used across different applications, and helps you integrate with any tool for flexible and powerful automation solutions.

What makes Robot Framework one of the top automation testing tools?

Access easy-to-use syntax with human-readable keywords.
Get extended capabilities by Java, Python, and different programming language libraries.
Get access to a rich ecosystem with the best tools, plugins, and libraries.

Watch this video to learn about the built-in tools and standard libraries.

Pytest

Pytest framework is one of the best Python testing frameworks where it lets you write test codes with the aid of the Python programming language. Easily write reliable, simple, and scalable test cases for APIs, databases, or UI. Right from simple unit tests to functional tests, you can write any form of the test using Pytest.

What makes Pytest one of the top automation testing tools?

Simple for starters, owing to its easier syntax.
Easily run parallel tests.
Run a specific test or even a test subset.
Detects tests faster and automatically.
Skip unimportant tests and focus on what’s needed.
Get open-source community support.

SpecFlow

SpecFlow, a Behavior Driven Development (BDD) supported testing framework, can help you define the application behavior in simple English text with a language known as Gherkin. With SpecFlow, you can easily increase your productivity since you can write automation code and feature files in your choice of IDE with C# and .NET methods. You can learn more about SpecFlow in this SpecFlow tutorial for automation testing.

What makes SpecFlow one of the top automation testing tools?

It’s user-friendly for both technical and non-technical folks.
Test anything and everything from UI App, mobile app, web app, database, and API.
All you need to do is learn Gherkin to write your automation test.
Easily integrate the BDD framework into the existing processes and tools.

NUnit

NUnit is one of the best unit testing frameworks for every .NET language. It was ported initially from JUnit, with the recent version entirely rewritten with a number of added features and support for .NET platforms. We use NUnit Engine as the component or foundation for the test runner.

What makes NUnit one of the top automation testing tools?

Using the NUnit 3 Test adapter, you can run the NUnit 3 tests within Visual Studio.
By using NUnit Engine, you can get every logic you need to run tests against NUnit 3.X and different frameworks.
Test runners can easily interact with NUnit Engine when they want to run tests smoothly.

Watir

Watir stands for Web Application Testing In Ruby. It is a Ruby library that automates browser interaction, allowing you to quickly and effectively test your application’s performance and behavior under various conditions. Waitr’s core functionality is based on Selenium WebDriver; however, it makes writing tests much easier by extracting the common boilerplate code you might otherwise have to write to interact with the browser.

In addition, Waitr includes a number of features for making testing easier, such as a functional testing framework that allows you to use RSpec-like syntax when creating tests.

What makes Watir one of the top automation testing tools?

Watir lets you easily measure the page performance.
Since it uses headless testing, it obtains the details on the command line without opening the browser. Thus, you can easily execute the UI test cases directly at the command line.
Conduct screenshot testing when and where you need to with Watir.
Reuse the code as classes with page objects.
Locate web elements easily.

RSpec

RSpec is a Ruby automation testing tool. It has been created especially for behavior-driven development (BDD) purposes. It’s a common-purpose Ruby testing library in production applications. Though it consists of a high-end DSL (domain-specific language), you can start hassle-free with this tool. You can also conduct Selenium automation testing with the RSpec framework using cloud testing platforms such as LambdaTest.

What makes RSpec one of the top automation testing tools?

Behavior-driven development (BDD) is a software development approach combining Domain-Driven Design, Test-Driven Development, and Acceptance Test-Driven Planning.
Simplify the TDD part. Focus on the design and documentation part of TDD in a better manner.
Get good control over unit testing.
Create easy and understandable test cases and failure reports.

PHPUnit

PHPUnit is the de facto unit testing framework in the PHP community. PHPUnit has built-in support for a wide variety of programming languages and technologies, including, for example, YAML, XML, and Markdown through the popular MarkdownTestSuite. It can load data from a wide range of sources, such as an XML file, JSON, or a database. The fact that it comes bundled with SVN, Git, and Mercurial helps avoid tests being run on the wrong branch or against the wrong version of your code.

The xUnit family of frameworks (which includes PHPUnit) use assertions that are very similar to each other and help you perform Selenium automation testing with PHPUnit.

What makes PHPUnit one of the top automation testing tools?

Find development stage issues fastly.
Easily conduct code refactoring or upgradation of the framework libraries.
It involves agile practices while covering functional needs.

Laravel

Laravel is a web app framework with elegant, expressive syntax. Laravel testing promotes clean code with simplified syntax. You can use it for a number of reasons, such as expressive coding, quick error handling, traffic management, and much more using a single command. All these make it quite remarkable for developers.

What makes Laravel one of the top automation testing tools?

Get testing support with PHPUnit with the pre-defined phpunit.xml file setup.
Kickstart unit testing most efficiently, ensuring that every module functions the way it should.
Reduce security risks such as SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, and cross-site scripting.

Additional alternative automation testing tools

Even though there are plenty of frameworks that can replace Selenium, we can take a look at different automation testing tools in the market. It can be beneficial when you have to run multiple tests in a shorter period of time, with less space for errors.

Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is an automation testing tool for end-to-end testing where you can manage test generation and execution and promote team collaboration and feedback. You can utilize it for continuous testing, where you can enable seamless integration into the ecosystem while transforming automated tests into continuous tests.

What makes Katalon Studio one of the top automation testing tools?

You can use it as an automation tool to test web, mobile, API, and desktop applications.
Get flexible automation support for projects and teams of any size globally.
Integrate easily with the CI/CD ecosystem.
Conduct cross-browser testing from macOS, Windows, and Linux in case of web automation and iOS and Android in case of mobile automation testing.
Get the best out of a user-friendly interface to manage codeless test automation while validating the web application’s UI element.

Tricentis Tosca

If you need a test automation platform that can accelerate and optimize end-to-end testing, then Tricentis Tosca is the right option. This AI-fueled, codeless automation testing tool can accelerate innovative solutions across different enterprises by helping you eliminate the testing bottlenecks and software release risks.

With Tricentis Tosca, you can conduct a wide range of tests, including exploratory testing, API Testing, system integration testing, and mobile testing. Through NeoLoad integration, it also supports performance testing.

What makes Tricentis Tosca one of the top automation testing tools?

Let your development team and QA know about native Jira, GitHub, and Jenkins integrations.
Get support for DevOps, even when you are in the quest of Agile vs Waterfall methodology.
Promote integration and automation with different DevOps toolchains.
Ensure support for nearly 160+ technologies.

Testsigma

This is the right option when you want to streamline your entire testing process under a single umbrella, right from the design phase to debugging to reporting. This end-to-end automation testing tool focuses on making testing quite collaborative and simple. With codeless test scripts, you can conduct end-to-end mobile, web, and API tests with a multitude of features such as visual UI testing, data-driven testing, and 2FA testing. Testsigma alternatives abound, but still, it has found its ground in codeless automation testing.

What makes Testsigma one of the top automation testing tools?

With Testsigma, you can easily replace a number of frameworks, broken test stacks, and complicated toolchains.
Get options to customize the platform as per your need.
It’s available to deploy locally and on the cloud.
Get automatic reports in an instant.

Ranorex

We have listed Ranorex among our automation testing tools list owing to its simplified low-code/no-code automation tool features with an extensive IDE. Get immediate feedback and manage costs. It can support a wide range of test automation tools for mobile, web, and desktop apps.

What makes Ranorex one of the top automation testing tools?

Integrate with Jira, Jenkins, TestRail, and many other DevOps tools which act as a backbone to automation testing.
Automate tests remotely or locally on virtual or real machines.
Run parallel tests for better cross browser testing.
Get rid of unimportant variations and bring in important ones while you generate fewer but valid scenarios.
Receive technical support anytime, anywhere.

TestingWhiz

TestingWhiz is one of the best codeless automation testing tools available for Web, Software, Database, Mobile, Web Services, Cloud, and API testing. The best part is the advanced architecture combined with the most innovative Automation Engine. It doesn’t take much time to learn this tool. But it has the potential to take your test automation journey to heights.

Why is TestingWhiz one of the top automation testing tools?

This tool allows you to automate web application testing, regression testing, cross-browser testing, database testing, mobile application testing, and web services testing.
Get a keyword-driven, less code text editor.
Integrate easily with bug tracking tools such as Atlassian JIRA and Test Management Tools at the likes of HP Quality Center.

Which one to choose for your business?

When we talk about your business, you would be the better judge. You would know which one would suit you the most. If the reason you have made it to the end of this blog (And we are proud of you!) is to understand which among the automation testing tools is right for you, it’s time for you to brainstorm with your team on your requirements and choose what you need. Ensure that it saves time and money while increasing productivity and team spirit. You can also go through our list of the best 13 test automation frameworks to get more ideas.

Conclusion

Hope you have enjoyed reading about the best automation testing tools in 2022. Now you need to check which one would suit your business the most. A few of them may not catch up with the latest cross browser testing trends, while others might not support project management tool integration. You need to analyze what you need to do deeply. This way, you can stay a step ahead of your testing cycle and carry out automation testing fuss-free.

Test automation would require team strength and support too. Hence, you must look into different aspects before picking the best automation testing tools.

Happy testing!

What Are Virtual Devices And How To Use Them For Testing?

aamritaangappa — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 16:54:00 +0000

Websites, web apps, and mobile apps are the three important conglomerates of the Internet world. When you open your browser, you are bound to see a page on your screen that would determine the future of someone’s business deals. A lot of workmanship goes behind making your website or app compatible with every user who clicks on the page. It’s more than replacing a button and using attractive fonts.

Any web or mobile device app or website should undergo rigorous testing in an early stage. This is to ensure better compatibility and context. However, ensuring the compatibility on all the devices, browsers, and browser versions can be challenging considering the diversity. So, during these stages, we bring virtual devices to ensure high-end prototyping and unit testing, which can be through an emulator or a simulator.

In this blog, we are going to cover everything you need to call yourself a journeyman in explaining what a virtual device is and why virtual device testing is needed.

Let’s get started!

What are Virtual Devices?

To put it in a nutshell, a virtual device is a software program mimicking a smartphone or desktop’s abilities and features. This virtual device lets testers run their app and get an understanding of the functioning of an app on real devices. In case of any bugs, testers have the liberty to rectify them then and there. Modern developers leverage virtual devices for websites and app testing in ‘near-to-native’ environments when the product is developing.

Do check out what Regression testing is? Its importance and types, and how to perform it.

Types of Virtual Devices

Virtual devices have been in practice since the Internet age. Since the 1990s, video game enthusiasts and geeks have found them adorable to the core, when they can emulate and simulate their favorite games and play whenever they want on their PC.

As a matter of fact, the widely accepted virtual devices are of two types:

Emulators
Simulators

Emulators: An emulator is a piece of software that imitates the behavior of (and in some cases, exact functionality of) another program by either providing an executable version of the other program’s machine code or by re-implementing its functionalities.

In a technical sense, emulators are hardware-independent because they can be executed on machines that do not match their native hardware specifications.

Simulators: A simulator is a program or application that attempts to simulate, or mimic, the behavior of a real-world process or system. Before moving on, we need to analyze how simulators work. There is a Fatal Flight Training Report showing that from 2000 to 2015, nearly 240 airplanes crashed during flight training. This has resulted in 432 fatalities. A few reasons for this tragedy include loss of control inflight (LOC-I), midair collisions, and so on.

What’s an alternative plan to overcome this challenge? That’s where iOS simulators, a form of a virtual device, came into play, where trainers map real-world scenarios in a virtual environment and provide training to new pilots without even actually letting them fly in the sky even once. This can prevent many hazardous scenarios.

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Benefits of using a Virtual Device

Virtual devices form a part of website, web, and mobile app testing basics and fundamentals. We have several benefits when we use virtual devices. A few of them are listed below:

Get more provisions
It would take a lot of time to replace your physical server when a disastrous event strikes. It would only take you a few minutes to replicate a virtual environment.
Cut some costs
There were days when organizations spent a huge portion of their IT budget to acquire physical servers to host web and mobile applications. With virtualization on the go, organizations have started to buy robust hardware to manage virtual systems since they are cost-effective.
DevOps efficiency
Your production environment isn’t impacted by maintenance operations much. There wouldn’t be any requirement for downtime during maintenance. VMs let you perform development processes and simplified web testing and applications.
Eco Friendly operations
When you have very few servers, you will save more power. The operational expenses would get reduced with a lesser carbon footprint produced by the data center.
Increase your productivity
The productivity of IT teams would be top par since they should only look at maintaining the host machines. On the other hand, it would be hard for teams that are not into virtual environments yet.
Does it sound impressive? It’s time for you to start mobile app testing with Emulators and Simulators.

Why Test on Virtual Devices?

According to Statista, these are the number of Android and iOS apps as of 2022:

We have nearly 1.95 billion websites as of June 2022, with more than 2 billion web apps.

Ahem…The numbers are increasing every second, minute, and hour! Don’t be surprised when you visit live Internet stats and see the numbers growing. There is a new website every second (Or maybe we can say millisecond).

As the number of mobile apps, web apps, and websites starts growing every year, don’t we need a stellar app testing solution to test them? That’s where a virtual device would come into play!

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Difference between Virtual Devices (emulators & simulators) and Physical Devices

You need to focus more on the importance of cross browser testing to build a strategy through which you can run your tests. When you choose the mobile devices to conduct testing, there would be three options: emulators, simulators, and physical devices.

When you use emulators, you can mimic the hardware of a device, whereas it’s not allowed for simulators, which allow only the software replication.

To explain this better, let’s look at the example of flight simulation we used earlier. When you use an iOS simulator, the plane’s mechanics, journey, flight surroundings, and operations are mimicked using a computer program. This just gives you an idea of how it would feel when you fly after your training. Let’s assume that scientists have invented a “flight emulator.”

Theoretically, it would allow you to visit the destination you need by flying in real-time. If this happens, there wouldn’t be much difference between an actual flight and an emulator right? Again, more complexities would arise, just like when you train someone on a real airplane. Similarly, you need to pick up emulators and simulators based on your chosen application.

On the other hand, if you opt for a physical device, you can expect many features that may not be supported by emulators and simulators (Sensor, MDM Support, Battery, Memory storage, and so on). But you need to be aware of the time and cost you would need to invest, which is more than emulators and simulators.

We use Android ‘emulators’ since you can easily mimic Android’s hardware and software (It’s open-source!). On the other hand, we use iOS ‘simulators’ since we have permission to simulate or imitate only the software of the iOS and macOS platform.

Ensure that you use the best emulators and simulators to test your Android and iOS apps.

Emulator vs Simulator vs Physical Device- Comparison Chart

CAPABILITY	ANDROID EMULATOR	IOS SIMULATOR	PHYSICAL DEVICE
Application Under Test	.APK file	.APP file	.IPA file
Real Device Hardware Imitation	Partial	Not Allowed	Allowed
Accessibility	Using Android SDK/ Android Studio	Using Apple Xcode environment/ XCTest	Using Android SDK/ Apple Xcode environment
Push Notifications	Allowed	Not Allowed	Allowed
Support for MDM	Not Allowed	Not Allowed	Allowed
Device Settings	Allowed	Not Allowed	Allowed
Support for Background Apps	Depends on the App	Depends on the App	Allowed
Camera	Not Allowed	Not Allowed	Allowed
Calls/Messages	Limited support through screen mock	Not Allowed	Allowed
OS Version testing	Basic image	Supported	Supported
Support for Non-native browser	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
Support for Sensors including GPS, Microphone	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
Face recognition	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
App Store installations	Allowed partially for non-NDK apps	Not allowed	Allowed for both Android and iOS
Support for MDM	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
Flaky test	Chances are high	Chances are high	Chances are low
Cross-browser testing	Allowed	Allowed	Not allowed
Cost	Expensive	Less Expensive	More Expensive
Cloud support	Allowed	Allowed	Allowed
Security features like 2FA	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
Support for GPU abilities	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed
Accuracy	Low-Medium	Low-Medium	High
Battery, memory check	Not allowed	Not allowed	Allowed

How to test websites, web apps, and mobile apps using Virtual Devices?

Testing your websites, web apps, and mobile apps isn’t as hard as you think when you have the right tools and experts to guide you. It’s always best to have an eye on your budget and think about the outcome you would like to see and your project deadline before you choose the tool.

Testing mobile apps on Virtual Devices

Mobile app testing plays an integral role in the mobile app development lifecycle. Hence we need to choose the different mobile app testing ways that suit us the most.

There are different ways to test mobile apps on virtual devices.

The most common ones include:

Test your mobile apps on Android Emulators and iOS Simulators
Test your mobile apps using cloud-based Emulators and Simulators

Testing mobile apps on Android Emulators and iOS Simulators

You can use Android emulators such as Android Studio and iOS simulators such as Apple Xcode to test your mobile app. Here is a screenshot of Android Studio:

Using the Android Studio

The Android Studio runs Android Emulator by default. The Android emulator replicates the behavior of Android devices on your system so that you can run Android device test your mobile apps on a number of devices without needing to have a physical device.

These are the steps you need to follow for virtual device testing:

Step 1: Download and install Android Studio.

Step 2: Click Run in the menu options. Choose Run ‘app’ to start working on the app.

To test the Android app, you can run it on an emulator using the following steps:

Step 3: Go to Device Manager to create an Android Virtual Device (AVD) in Android Studio, which the emulator can utilize for the app installation and run.

Step 4: Select the virtual device configuration options of your choice.

Step 5: Install the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM).

Step 6: After you install the Intel HAXM (either manually or through Android Studio), you can download and install the SDK Component Installer. Once you are done, click finish.

Step 7: Choose the right AVD to run the app successfully.

Step 8: After you have created the AVD, you can find it in the list of virtual devices on the right corner of the screen. Choose it to run the test.

Step 9: **Click on the **Run icon to run the Android emulator. Now you can debug the app!

Using the Apple Xcode environment

Xcode provides you with the needed ability where you can write different tests at various abstraction levels. You can use it to test if your project would enhance the robust process, bug reduction, and increase the speed and product acceptance for marketing, sales, and distribution. This way, you can improve overall user satisfaction.

To install Apple Xcode:

Step 1: Create an Apple ID or log in if you have one.

Step 2: Go to the Apple developers page.

Step 3: Click on Develop option at the top.

Step 4: Select Xcode.

Step 5: Click on Download.

Step 6: The latest version of Xcode(Xcode14) is in beta mode. From the list of options available, choose the Xcode version of your choice.

You can use the XCTest framework, which is the testing framework of Xcode, to include many faster, isolated unit tests while covering the logic of the app. Then you can easily include integration tests to demonstrate that those smaller parts are well integrated. In the final stages, you can bring in UI and performance tests to ensure that the app satisfies the user’s needs.

Testing mobile apps on cloud-based Emulators and Simulators

LambdaTest is the most popular cloud-oriented cross browser testing platform offering you an upper hand over real device cloud for native app testing and virtual testing with Android emulator online and iPhone simulator online. It allows you to perform mobile app testing exceptionally with emulators and simulators.

Other reasons include:

Leverage single click approach for the .apk app and .zip files. All you need to do is upload the file belonging to the mobile app. Then, follow what you need to do.
Get access to an Android emulator for app testing and an iOS simulator for app testing to increase the overall probability of a successful real device run.
Test your app over 50+ geolocations by simulating the IP geolocation and GPS location when you test the mobile app.
Get access to over-the-top bug logs on the dashboard with a single click. Get detailed insights on bug insights and logs when you create that perfect app.

Follow these steps to emulate mobile apps for live testing:

Step 1: Sign up and log in to the LambdaTest account. Choose Real Time Testing from the left sidebar.

Step 2: All you need to do next is go to the App Testing option and upload the app. Then, choose the BRAND, DEVICE/OS, and click START.

Step 3: This would route you to the needed cloud-oriented emulator/simulator.

All done! It’s time for you to test your mobile apps with your chosen OS and DEVICE combo.

Watch this video to learn about the cloud-based mobile app testing that LambdaTest offers:

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel to receive the latest tutorials and videos on test automation, online browser testing, and much more.

Testing websites and web apps on Virtual Devices

There are different ways to test websites and web apps on virtual devices.

The most common ones include:

Test your websites and web apps using a browser emulator online
Test your websites and web apps on Android Emulators and iOS Simulators
Test your websites and web apps using cloud-based Emulators and Simulators

Testing websites and web apps using a browser emulator online

You can leverage the in-built developer tools or online mobile browser emulator that’s present in popular desktop browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari and so on. This also lets you test the website’s mobile view manually. You can also check our blog on how to use virtual machines for cross browser testing.

Let’s see how we do it in Chrome and Firefox:

Google Chrome

Step 1: Go to Chrome -> More tools (by clicking on the three-dotted lines on the top right corner).

Step 2: Go to Developer tools.

Step 3: Then, click on the Device Toggle bar present before Elements as shown below:

Step 4: You can now choose an Android or iOS device from Dimension: Responsive.

Mozilla Firefox

Step 1: Go to Firefox -> More tools (by clicking on the three dots on the top right corner).

Step 2: Go to Web Developer Tools.

Step 3: Click on Responsive Design Mode.

Step 4: Now, you can choose the Android or iOS device.

Testing websites and web apps on Android Emulators and iOS Simulators

You can test your websites and web apps using Android emulators like Android Studio and iOS simulators like Apple Xcode without having to install additional software on your computer. You can refer to our earlier section to install Android Studio and Apple Xcode to test websites and web apps on Android emulators and iOS simulators.

Testing websites and web apps on cloud-based Emulators and Simulators

When you leverage the power of cloud-based Android emulators and iOS simulators instead of in-house products, nothing can stop you. Cloud-oriented testing platforms such as LambdaTest can provide you with an online device farm consisting of 3000+ devices and OS. You needn’t painstakingly set up emulators and simulators on your own and start with virtual browsers.

It offers plenty of real-time features such as real device cloud testing, geolocation testing, integrations with 200+ third-party applications and tools, localized page testing, LT Browser, a tool to conduct responsiveness tests, and a lot more.

Follow these steps to emulate mobile browsers for live testing:

Step 1: Sign up and log in to the LambdaTest account. Choose Real Time Testing from the left sidebar.

Step 2: Choose the BRAND, DEVICE/OS, and BROWSER. Click START.

Step 3: This would route you to the needed cloud-oriented emulator/simulator.

All done! It’s time for you to test your websites or web apps with your chosen browser, OS, device, and location combo.

Challenges of Virtual Device Testing

Virtual device testing isn’t easy when you regularly want to test high-end mobile and web applications. Lots of patience, expertise and skills are required. These are the challenges testers usually face when they test on virtual devices:

Complex manual testing processes.
Inability to emulate and simulate real-time environmental features like battery operations, GPS, memory, and so on.
Memory storage issues might arise.
You might face communication issues with your team. If this happens, you will face difficulties trying to point out the bugs and errors on time.
Using VPN might not help you completely when you want to track the location since it’s hard to keep track of the change logs.
Even though it’s not as expensive as physical devices, it’s still time-consuming and expensive when you have to do virtual device testing manually.

Best practices for Virtual Device Testing

Virtual device testing would become your cup of cake when you follow the industry-preferred best practices, followed by the Dumbledores of testing and coding. These are the practices you need to keep in mind when implementing virtual device testing:

Assess the testing needs and the project size before starting.
You can depend upon virtual device testing when you want to test the user interface and functionality.
Real device testing is implemented in scenarios when you need to check the CPU usage, memory leaks, and network issues.
If you are looking for a cost-effective solution, it’s always best to rely upon real device-on-cloud for native and hybrid apps.
It’s always best to consult a team of experts before you make any decision.

All these challenges can be overcome when you use a real device for testing. The good news is it comes with cloud support where you don’t have to set up any on-premise device lab. LambdaTest allows you to test any Android or iOS app on the Real Device cloud without tedious setup or maintenance costs. Say goodbye to cumbersome testing processes.

Conclusion

Choosing the right emulators and simulators is of utmost importance when you want to test your app or website the way you should. Even though manually depending on emulators and simulators can take away your time and money, depending on cloud solutions can act as a savior for your team. Depending upon the best cloud-testing platform is a must to mitigate the limitations imposed by traditional emulators and simulators. This will also come in handy when launching your product or product update.

Happy virtual device testing!

The Ultimate Website Testing Checklist For 2022

aamritaangappa — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 10:57:00 +0000

How important is your business website? Trust me when I say it can uplift your brand reputation, amplify your lead-to-client rate, and skyrocket your overall sales. How does this happen?

It’s possible when you keep checking your website regularly, update every aspect of it- right from content to design, as per the current trends, and perform website testing on a regular basis either manually or using an automated web testing platform.

Leave no stone unturned, from following up with the current cross-browser testing trends to incorporating best practices for responsive websites in order to build the best website testing strategy in the market.

In this article, we have explored the need for website testing, challenges faced during website testing, the website testing checklist you need to look upon, and tips and best practices followed for better website testing.

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Why do you need to do website testing?

Around 40% of users wouldn’t come back to your website if the loading time exceeds 3 seconds. The number of reasons a user might turn away from your website is almost endless. It’s essential to look at every page of your site and ask yourself, “What in this page would cause a visitor to leave the site?”

The answer could be anything: the site could be too slow to load, the navigation might be difficult to use, or even your font choice is too hard to read. The only way you can make sure each page is as good as it can be is by considering all these points one by one.

Do you know?

Around 73% of mobile Internet users are familiar with a website taking too much time to load.
51% of mobile Internet users have come across websites that crash, freeze, or lead to a 404 page.
38% of mobile Internet users have stumbled upon an unavailable website.
47% of consumers would demand that their website loads in <=2 seconds.
A 1 second page response delay can bring down 7% of conversions.
When an e-commerce website makes $100,000 daily, with a one-second page delay, you could lose $2.5 million yearly sales.

How to beat the blues of your website’s bad impression in the first instance? That’s where website testing comes into the picture.

Website testing is a must when you want to detect the core blockades and issues that stop your website from thriving. Testing your website over a smorgasbord of website components can ensure that they work as they should. This will be helpful when you want to ensure that your end-users love your website as you do!

Nowadays, search engines have evolved. With the use cases of AI and Machine Learning, search engine optimization has become extremely vital to attract more visitors to your website. To ensure that the search engines favor your website, you need to ensure that it’s bug-friendly.

As of now, the majority of the users are dependent on Google to carry out their day-to-day online surfing. This translates into the fact that Google-friendly websites can mean business-friendly results. Not just Google, you need to optimize your website for other search engines since you don’t know when and where your customers can knock on your door online.

Consumers make decisions on the basis of what information they have been fed online. Like how you landed on this blog from a particular search engine, you can also expect your customers to visit your blog page to catch up with the latest market buzz or make a crucial decision such as buying your product or availing your services.

This can show you how you shouldn’t stick to a 90s model website with non-responsive buttons and crampy fonts. To put it short, do everything it takes to build that responsive website.

You should keep updating your website content, design, and literally everything! It should be user-friendly and professional rather than gaudy and amateurish. This gives more weightage to website testing in recent times, especially when your customers are going to make a game-changing business decision by looking at your website. That’s why we created our website testing checklist with our users and customers in mind.

Challenges faced during website testing

Every challenge is an opportunity to grow. You can take a chill pill after exploring the problems faced during web testing and sort it out. Hence, awareness of upcoming challenges is a must before you take the necessary steps to mitigate them. Before deep-diving into our website testing checklist, it’s important to revise those challenges faced by you:

Lack of cross-browser compatibility

The website could be a portfolio site or an e-commerce site. But the demand to appear impressive on these browsers has headed businesses on a steep cliff to either keep up with the trends or call it a day. Without cross browser testing, it becomes difficult to take your website to the next level. This cross browser compatibility guide will help web designers and developers in providing an in-depth understanding of how cross browser transparency works.

Here is a short glimpse of how to perform cross browser testing on the cloud:

Not matching up with the expectations
Skill level needs and requirements
Understanding the user issues
Lack of time management
Bandwidth issue
Security concerns
Team collaboration

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Website Testing checklist you shouldn’t ignore

To make website testing a breeze, it’s always advisable to make efficient use of a website testing checklist. It takes only a few points to remember during different software testing phases before making that remarkable website go live. Take a look at our all-in-one website testing checklist to make testing a cakewalk.

☑️Documentation Testing

It’s better to be prepared from the beginning itself. Hence, it’s advisable to start with documentation testing. The tester does a clear study of the website documentation, analyses the functionality of the website, goes through the final website layout, and creates a website testing plan.

You need to analyze these facts when you depend upon the website testing checklist:

Test cases
Requirements
Test plan
Traceability matrix

☑️Functionality Testing

Automated functionality testing is one of the important website testing processes through which a QA would be able to determine how the software would perform and sync with pre-set requirements. This method uses black-box testing techniques, where a tester would be oblivious to the logic of the internal system.

Our website testing checklist will be incomplete if you don’t rely upon these types of functionality testing:

Validation testing
Ensure that you use valid HTML tags for your website. Using a W3C validator can come in handy. Also, you need to validate different website fields like CSS fields, radio buttons, dropdowns, combo boxes, text boxes, checkboxes, and links. You can learn more about validation testing from our earlier blog on test verification vs validation in website testing.
URL/Links testing
Test for the credibility of your internal links such as About us and Contact us page and external links such as backlinks. Also, ensure the email links are fixed properly and fix those broken links.
Web Forms testing
Ensure that your form redirects to the necessary webpage. You should be able to store the data that the client inputs on your website.
Cookies testing
A cookie is nothing but information stored by the web server in a text file on the hard drive of your user. When we access the website later by the web browser, through encryption, the stored cookie can act as an identifier, allowing the website to serve the user as per their interest and needs. Sometimes, when a hacker steals these cookies, they can manipulate the data. That’s why you need to test the cookie.
Error Message testing
We need to depend upon error messages to get an idea of how users can skip the page since it’s non-functional at the moment. Add a pinch of creativity and make your error messages sound sensible.

☑️Interface Testing

Interface or UI testing is nothing but a type of software testing to verify that there is precise communication between two different software systems. A connection integrating two different components to enable communication between a user and a device is known as an interface, which can be an API, web service, or anything. When you test these connecting services, it’s known as interface testing.

To ensure that interface testing is done correctly, here is a mini website testing checklist for interface testing:

You need to check that the execution of servers is flawless
Error-handling is done correctly
Check what happens when the web server connection is reset in between

☑️Compatibility Testing

This type of compatibility testing ensures that you render the web pages correctly under various browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox. Is your website working with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac, and Linux?

You need to test it manually or use an automated device testing platform such as LambdaTest. Cloud-based cross-browser testing platforms like LambdaTest provides an online device farm of 3000+ real browsers, devices, and operating systems to help you perform compatibility testing at scale.

You can also employ cloud testing, spiced up with plenty of website testing benefits. Maintain this website testing checklist for better compatibility to check if your website is functioning like a pro under different:

Browser
OS
Hardware configurations
Screen resolutions
Geolocations
Brands
Network environments

☑️Usability Testing

The usability testing would fall under the black box testing method where you can test with your user’s point of view in mind. We can implement this technique in a user-oriented interactive design for evaluating the product or service when you test it against a specific user. Usability is the lifeline for the survival of a website since depending on different types of usability testing can impress your web users.

These are the different types of Usability testing — Accessibility, Navigation, Identity, and Content.

**Accessibility testing** involves checking the site load-time, font size, spacing, website add-ons, flash, image ALT tags, and internal links. You can learn more about accessibility testing through this guide on how to perform accessibility testing.
Identity testing refers to testing if the website logo, tagline, contact, and company information are correctly mentioned.
Navigation testing means checking if a website is easy to read, find, and use. Take care of aspects like the site search button.
Content testing means ensuring that the headings are clear, SEO aspects are met, font colors and styles are clear, keywords are used appropriately, and title tags are on par with the standards. This is done to impress your user with that killer content.

Do you know regression testing? This article looks at what Regression testing is, its importance and types, and how to perform it.

☑️Performance testing

We use performance testing to ensure that the website performs well with respect to the speed, responsiveness, stability under different load conditions, and scalability of an application. You can also use performance testing to understand the response time. We perform this test to understand the website’s scalability, balance the loopholes, and test the overall response time between a client and the server. It’s vital to perform load tests and stress tests with the right team support.

We propose these points in our website testing checklist during performance testing:

Use the best virtual device such as emulators and simulators or a real device cloud platform to know how your website performs under different environments.
Look how you can optimize the code and decrease load time.
Calculate the number of visitors and see how your website performs. Does it crash when many users log in at the same time? If so, you need to fix it.

☑️Security Testing

This is a common form of testing where you check for any existing weaknesses or vulnerabilities. This is also called penetration testing. In website testing, security is of utmost importance. Since there are billions of websites online, it has become a common platform for hackers to aim for their next virtual heist. Hackers can intimidate you with advanced methods for stealing or taking control of the most crucial data on your website.

A few important aspects of security testing include:

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
Vulnerability
Password cracking
SQL injection
URL manipulation

Remember these pointers when you perform security testing:

Securely store your personal and confidential information
Ensure to secure your website password with Two-factor Authentication (2FA)
Always moderate the comments you receive on your content
In case of accessing payment requests from your customers, always use a trusted platform. Otherwise, it can backfire on your brand reputation

☑️Confirmation Testing or Re-Testing

We perform change-related testing to keep track of the bugs and confirm that they are fixed. You need to write the test cases and run and re-run them again to ensure they are bug-free. Once you make any changes to the code, it shouldn’t give rise to new detects. To reassure this fact, we perform regression testing, which is a form of retesting.

☑️Mobile-Friendly Testing

Many people prefer to read content on mobile in comparison to websites in recent times. Hence, your website should cater to the mobile audience. Website testing on mobile devices can solve the barrier between mobile and web users to unveil more mobile-friendly websites. You can go through this guide on mobile testing to learn some of the best practices to test on mobile devices.

Here are a few things you need to remember when you perform mobile-friendly website testing:

Verify smartphones and tablet compatibility
Optimize the website loading time
Ensure simple website navigation
Optimize the size of the image
Avoid using Flash and pop-ups
Insert proper contact details
Use bullet points and shorter sentences
Optimize your location via GPS

☑️Database Testing

We should perform database testing using the best database testing tools for checking how the web application would store the needed data while performing different functions, including:

Query execution while testing to check if there is any error
Regularly checking the website query response time
Ensuring that there is an accurate reflection of test data retrieved in the website
Avoiding data integrity when you create, update or delete data in your database

It’s easy to perform database testing- set up your test environment, execute the test by running test cases under different test environments, check the results to validate the expected vs actual results.

☑️Beta Testing

This is the final testing prerelease stage. This is performed by end-users and real-time users. This is done to understand the perspective of the user when you release the final version.

Remember these points in the website testing checklist when you perform beta testing:

Learn from whatever mistakes you make. Document them to write better test cases in the future.
Share the results with your team immediately. Using the right communication tool is a must.
Debug the errors as fast as you can. Prioritize what’s important and what you can look into later.
Provide clear instruction to your website testers before and after they conduct beta tests.

Are you interested to know more about beta testing? Learn how to perform beta testing for apps.

Website Testing Checklist: Key Takeaways

Hope you have found our website testing checklist useful! Following these small steps in our website testing checklist can significantly change how your user perceives your website:

Look out for small, hidden website errors. Check thoroughly.
Prepare a plan. Document it. Analyze the test cases, test plans, traceability matrix, and requirements.
Validate URL/links, web forms, cookies, and error messages.
Safeguard your website from any sort of spam links.
Look for different factors regarding website usability.
Verify the website’s navigation process.
Check for cross-browser compatibility with Browser, OS, Hardware configurations, Screen resolutions, Geolocations, Brands, and Network environments.
Ensure every URL is live and functioning.
Check if the mobile is responsive.
Check if the website loads faster.
Ensure that the website is SEO-friendly.
Check for Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Vulnerability, Password cracking, SQL injection, and URL manipulation.
Check if the website’s security aspects with SSL certificates are well managed.
Validate both HTML and CSS code.
Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.
Prepare for a backup plan just in case of a disaster.
Check for query execution and response time, test data reflection, and avoid data integrity while creating, updating, and deleting database data.
Perform beta testing with the user in mind. Provide the right support to website testers during this phase. Keep communication intact.

Did you find our website testing checklist useful? Follow LambdaTest learning hub for various resources, including HTML Cheat Sheet and CSS Cheat Sheet.

Conclusion

When you perform website testing, you don’t have to prepare for an apocalypse. All you need to remember are a few pointers we have provided above in our website testing checklist. This can go a long way in ensuring that your website meets industry standards. Creating a website is a beautiful process if you follow the proper steps.

Testing a website can be hassle-free if you keep your users in mind and create a website for humans rather than bots. With a cloud-based online browser farm such as LambdaTest and depending on a thorough website testing checklist, you can decode website testing effortlessly.

Happy testing!

Physical Device vs Real Device Cloud Testing: A Detailed Guide

aamritaangappa — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 15:58:00 +0000

Physical device testing has been in the market for a long time. Even today, you can’t deny the importance it holds in the world of testers. In this age of automation testing and real device cloud testing, physical device testing still has the same reverence owing to its unwavering vitality in usability testing and hardware functionality testing, such as camera and GPS. Yet, if you want to reduce your overall project cost, you need to opt for a smarter solution that would enable features such as performing cross-browser testing at scale.

That’s when real device cloud testing comes to your aid. It comes with its own sets of advantages, such as cloud storage, access to communication tool integration, testing with the latest virtual browsers and OS versions, and much more.

In this article, we will look at both physical device testing and real device cloud testing, compare and contrast while analyzing which would fit your business model.

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What are physical devices?

A physical device is a combination of software and hardware through which you can perform certain operations. It can range anywhere between a Smartphone or a PC. The best example would be the device you are currently using to read this blog (And we are glad about that!). It could be an iPhone or a Windows PC, but hasn’t it helped you reach the doorsteps of our website and catch up on our content?

Physical devices combined with Internet connectivity have made people’s lives easier than ever. You can use a physical device to play games, watch movies, text your friends, mail your colleagues, buy groceries, and what not? Similarly, you can use physical devices for mobile app testing or testing web applications. It’s no magic! You are testing the app you have built directly on your device to check how it performs under different conditions based on battery, GPS, memory storage, and so on.

Even though 44% of IT companies have gone on to automate half of their testing processes in 2020, Physical device testing still matters a lot.

What is physical device testing?

Physical device testing refers to testing your mobile or web app and website through manual and automation testing strategies using a hardware device. It can range anywhere from checking if a button is properly functioning to understanding if the app freezes on certain devices when a memory storage issue occurs.

This term is most commonly used as a method of testing mobile apps, but it can also be used for websites and desktop applications. Using physical devices for testing allows you to get an accurate picture of how your app or site will look and function on actual devices. The tests can be performed in a lab environment on physical devices that are representative of the targeted mobile platform. Depending on the type of test you are conducting and the environment in which you are testing, using physical devices may be more suitable in some situations than others.

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Why should you test on physical devices?

When you run your test suite on physical devices, it comes loaded with a lot of goodness. Here are a few points:

More hardware support: Physical devices support cameras, sensors, GPS, facial recognition, accelerometer, pyrometer, and several other features not yet supported by virtual devices.
Experience real environment testing: Physical device testing makes sure that your tests are adaptable to real-world conditions. Get rid of flaky tests through automatable test scenarios where you receive those annoying false positives. You can easily replicate any bugs found on the device.
Enhanced performance: Testing on physical devices are comparatively faster and more accurate than on virtual devices such as emulators and simulators. This would obviously result in faster build times.
Sort out usability issues: Finding usability issues are quite easier on physical devices. Be it an unresponsive button or a poor system configuration, you can fix these usability issues easily with a physical device. You can easily perform usability testing with physical devices.
Identify bugs faster than Thor: Prevention is better than cure. Get rid of complexities and incompatibilities by testing on physical devices before it’s out in the world for your customer’s judgments. This will help you write better test cases.
Get an idea of configuration settings: Get a clear idea of the configuration settings in real-time on different devices. This can help you out when you work on different projects in the near future.
Provide reports confidently: There is no need to hesitate when you have to report to your client that the app or website has passed the test when you test on actual handsets. This can accelerate the speed at which your product would reach the customer.
Third-party support: Not every library is supported by virtual devices. But most of them come under the support system of physical devices.

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What are the limitations of physical devices?

This is the red pill you need to swallow- Physical devices aren’t the right choice when you are testing minor functionalities. Would you prefer buying an iPhone just to check if your app opens on it without crashing? There are so many things you need to ponder over deeply when you depend upon physical device testing. Some of them are listed below:

It costs a lot: Physical devices aren’t always the cup of tea for businesses with limited time and budget. It might be taxing when you want to buy everything on your own and test within a limited time frame. The maintenance and repair costs involved in the procurement of mobile app testing tools can also take a toll on your team.
Location-based barriers: Not every physical device will be available across every geographical location. Depending on the rules and regulations of a certain country, a need might arise to compromise on a few factors. Geo-location testing is hard when you perform physical device testing.
Shop-to-table time matters: Getting complete awareness of where a particular device is available might be arduous even during this internet age. Your team would have to travel to and fro to buy those items needed to test. Even if you are ordering online, it’s liable to defects and late arrival.
Being choosy is a must: Even experts can feel the heat when they have to determine how many handset types they need and which would suit them the best. There are umpteen handsets and tablets available in the market currently. Picking the best one is a skill at which not everyone might excel.
On-premise challenges: When you use physical devices, your team is bound to be at your workstation. It becomes an ordeal when you are supposed to let them work from home due to unavoidable circumstances.
Lacking IDE support: It’s hard to connect real handsets to IDE compared to emulators. This could bring down the speed of the debugging process.

To get over these limitations, you can choose real device cloud testing.

What are real devices on cloud?

To put it in layman’s terms, the Real device cloud is a mobile testing-based environment that we host on the cloud. It consists of real Android and iOS devices accessible from the desktop browser. You can use it to test your apps and websites. All you need to do is sign up and log in to your account. Combined with the power of fuss-free UI and highly capable IDE, you can expect more accuracy and flexibility in comparison to mobile app emulators and simulators.

Go through our Mobile app testing tutorial to learn more about it.

Why should you perform real device cloud testing?

Real device cloud testing is winning laurels, thanks to its features such as “access your data anytime, anywhere” and “subscribe once, test for a lifetime.”

Stay updated: It’s vital that you set up a mobile environment that is up-to-date with the latest arrivals in the market, be it devices, operating systems, or brands. Real device testing is the best option to make this happen since it’s loaded with the latest browsers, OS, and brands. Pick from endless options within seconds!
Work from anywhere: Things get messy when you can’t expect your team members to be available onsite to test the physical devices. That’s when real devices on the cloud come into the picture. You can connect with your teammates and test at the comfort of your workcation spot or home sweet home, even if you are into the busiest project involving mobile app testing on cloud.
Get the latest updates: When you miss a certain feature or tool in your physical device, you need to wait until you get hold of it. It’s not the case in Real device cloud testing, where you can access every feature you need then and there through plugins and extensions.
Flawless communication: There is no need to send endless emails and wait for a timely reply in vain, only to receive customer feedback on the same bug. You can mark a bug without any delay and notify your team through project management tools like JIRA and Slack.
Parallel testing: Real device on Cloud is suitable for large-scale testing where you can test as many as 100 devices simultaneously through parallel testing. This is one major advantage of real device cloud testing.

What are the limitations of real device cloud testing?

Opting for Real devices on the cloud might lead you to miss out on testing features such as facial recognition, camera, sensors, and bluetooth. However, since its pros dominate its cons, you can substitute those few features which are currently unavailable on Real Devices on Cloud with physical device testing.

Physical device testing vs Real device cloud testing- A detailed comparison

Before we determine the supremacy of physical devices and real device cloud, we need to look at how they vary. Let’s look at the basic facts that set apart physical devices and real device clouds.

FUNCTIONALITY	PHYSICAL DEVICE	REAL DEVICE ON CLOUD
UI layout testing	Yes	Yes
Loading speed	Yes	Yes
GPS	Yes	Yes
Camera, Sensors and Bluetooth	Yes	No
Gesture control	Yes	Yes
Different browsers, devices, and OS support	Yes	Yes
Memory, size, and CPU testing	Yes	Yes

Which one to choose for your business?- Physical device testing or real device cloud testing?

When you evaluate an app or a website through software testing, there are many factors that you need to consider. There shouldn’t be a thin line between expected results vs actual results. It’s done to ensure that the program works as we need it to work. It should be budget-friendly and time-saving in every way, rather than burning a hole in your pocket. It should also not make meeting deadlines difficult.

Before you choose a specific testing strategy, be it physical device or real device cloud testing, you need to remember these factors:

Objective of the test: Look into the test objective. Do you want to test an entire app or is it just unit testing for now? Knowing this factor is essential when you want to choose if you want to perform your test on physical device cloud testing or real device cloud testing.
Rise assessment: Assess the risk posed by the methodology you choose. Compare it with an alternative methodology. It might cost you more when choosing physical device testing, but would it be manageable when you pick up real device cloud testing? You need to brainstorm on it.
Requirements: Look for your app or website requirements. Decide according to it. Does it require you to test the camera features? Do you need to rely upon GPS support? When do you want to test mobile browsers? Think about these factors before you choose real device cloud testing.
Project timeline: Understand the bandwidth of the project. Discuss with your team to know whether it’s short-term or long-term. For smaller projects, you can opt for the physical device, but for a long-duration project where you need to keep track of every test log, it’s highly opinionated to choose real device cloud testing.
App or website type: Determine the type of app or website you would want to test. It could be a VR-based app or an e-commerce website. You must determine the project scale and choose the web or mobile app testing strategy accordingly.
Time and budget: They play a crucial role in determining the testing strategy you are going to adopt. Usually, our customers rely upon real device cloud testing to complete their testing within a smaller time frame. On the other hand, physical device testing can cost more bucks and clocks.
Adherence to industry norms: Every industry has a certain set of regulations and guidelines we need to adhere to. Your real device on the cloud should support it.
Documentation support: What if you get stuck when you are testing a certain feature? Will you be able to go back and look into the technical documentation for better clarity? Ensure that your physical or real device cloud testing provider offers them.
SDLC and ATLC support: Keep an eye out for the software development lifecycle along with the automation testing lifecycle. Testing is a permanent process. Every app or website would demand testing at different stages and frequencies. Ensure that the methodology you choose suffices.
Team capability: Hire the best testers out there, but the testing process shouldn’t bring down morale and lead to burnout and demotivation.
Flexible features: Any app or website would need constant changes. Your testing methodology should support it.

LambdaTest is the most advanced cross-browser testing platform where you can perform real device cloud testing with our online device farm of over 3000+ browser, OS and device versions.

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel for getting the latest updates on the best way to test cross browser compatibility, best practices to test internet explorer compatibility, and responsiveness test.

LambdaTest lets you perform Android automation testing and iOS automation testing on Real Device Cloud, where you can skip the requirement of an internal device library and bring down operational costs. When you perform real device cloud testing, you can make use of network logs, device logs, app logs, videos, and screenshots to debug your app. All you need to do is upload the .abb, .apk or .ipa files to test your apps. You can also install production apps when you download them directly from the Play Store or App Store.

It’s extremely simple to work on! It’s a cloud platform crafted with love by the testers for the testers.

Step 1: Login to your LambdaTest account. If you don’t have a LambdaTest account, sign up for free.

Step 2: **Select Real Device from the left panel. You will get two options- **Real Time and App Automation. You can conduct real time browser testing and app testing, as well as automated app testing.

Step 3: You can find two options in Real Time — App Testing and Browser Testing.

Real Device App Testing

For App Testing, all you need to do is upload an app of your choice, configure the Device and OS type and start the test.

**Step 4: **Once your app gets installed, you can test it.

Real Device Browser Testing

Please follow Steps 1–4.

Step 5: Go to Browser Testing. You can provide the URL directly when you start the session. So, click START after providing the D*EVICE TYPE, **DEVICE/OS, and **BROWSER*.

**Step 6: **Now, the website you want to test opens in the cloud-supported real device on the LambdaTest app. You can test it now.

Conclusion

Choosing a physical device or a real device cloud is an option you need to ponder over before you fix your mobile app testing strategy. You need to look at various factors before you pick the right choice. It’s always recommended to rely upon standard cloud testing service providers such as LambdaTest when you want to test your apps or websites on a large scale using real device cloud testing. This way, you can always stay a step ahead of the testing curve laid out by the market.

How To Use Appium Inspector For Mobile Apps

aamritaangappa — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 11:45:00 +0000

Let’s put it short: Appium Desktop = Appium Server + Inspector. When Appium Server runs automation test scripts, Appium Inspector can identify the UI elements of every application under test. The core structure of an Appium Inspector is to ensure that you discover every visible app element when you develop your test scripts. Before you kickstart your journey with Appium Inspector, you need to understand the details of it.

In this article on Appium Inspector, let’s cover what Appium Inspector is, why choose it, its pros, what are the specifications of Appium Inspector, how to integrate Appium Inspector, and much more.

Introduction to Appium Inspector

Appium Inspector is the most comprehensive tool for managing tasks such as script recording and element discovery. This tool comes in handy when you want to automate a new app. This is known to be a standard procedure for identifying the mobile app’s unique UI elements. The tool has been under maintenance for Windows and OS X.

All you need to do is download Appium Inspector and install it, for which both Windows and OS X versions (.app and .exe) are available.

Why choose Appium Inspector?

Appium Inspector is a boon for testers wanting to identify UI elements of a mobile app. We can download Appium Inspector and use it to manage the following tasks:

Get a thorough idea of the element hierarchy: Developers can feel this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it means the iceberg itself for testers. It provides developers with the right information on how to align certain UI elements with each other and also on what different fragments/layers are present in the app.
Find the attributes: Appium Inspector is used for finding the name, value, description, and different object/element attributes. Objects consist of certain identifiable characteristics which we can identify through the tool. It would then be used directly for the XPath command.
Record manual app actions: Appium Inspector lets you record different app actions manually to access hierarchy and elements and record them to ensure clear test scripts for the app.

Do you want to know more about XPath? Go through our XPath locator cheatsheet to get a better understanding of XPath locators.

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Benefits of Appium Inspector

When you download Appium Inspector, it comes along with tons of benefits for mobile app testers. It isn’t as taxing as it used to be earlier to achieve all these benefits. Let’s explore them:

No need to install Appium Software

Appium can be a tough nut to crack for new users. Many must be wondering about facts like how to use Appium Inspector. To start Appium testing, enterprise mobility teams should install Appium Desktop on every workstation available for testing. This process is quite lengthy but the resources and time spent can be a daunting affair as a whole.

Access Device Remotely

Appium Inspector allows you to perform tests on real mobile devices in app testing scenarios, such as writing mobile test scripts with Appium Inspector to identify objects easily. This has provided ample reasons for teams to use real Android and iOS devices to perform testing.

Using a built-in Appium server and inspector is not compulsory for emulators and/or simulators. Instead, they can switch to real devices to write and run Appium test scripts.

Obtain Web Objects

Enterprise mobility teams would love Appium Inspector since it can help testers identify objects quickly when they write Appium test scripts. Besides that, Appium Inspector can work on additional content and app types that are not supported by Appium Desktop, such as hybrid apps. It can support native mobile apps though.

Specifications of Appium Desktop Inspector

Basically, Appium Desktop Inspector needs the following to run:

A running Appium server that you can access through the network via the Inspector (It can be an Appium server that runs on localhost or another one that runs on a cloud service).
Every Appium driver, plugin, tool, and other necessities you might come across.

If you are in a position to start an Appium session from the typical client library, you can get the same done with the Inspector.

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These are the Appium Desktop specifications:

To test Android apps:

A Desktop or a PC with macOS X 10.7 or Windows 10 or later versions.
Java SE version 8 or advanced versions, Java Development Kit (JDK).
A simulator or an iOS device.
Node and npm (Version 10 and above).
Integrated development environment (IDE).
An emulator or an Android device.
Appium or Appium Desktop.

To test iOS Apps:

A PC with macOS X 10.7 or above versions.
Xcode- latest version.
Homebrew
Integrated development environment (IDE).
Java SE version 8 or Java Development Kit (JDK).
Node and npm (Version 10 and above).
A simulator or an iOS device.
Paid, active Apple developer account when you run Appium on a real iOS device.
Appium or Appium Desktop.

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Getting started with Appium Inspector

The below image is the core architecture of the Appium request flow. It’s important to know this before you venture on to know how to use Appium Inspector. When the client requests the Appium server to provide a set of commands, the Appium Inspector identifies the mobile app elements included in it. It uses a set of attributes to identify the elements before it reaches the target system. This is when the user would be able to perform the action they had intended to perform.

Appium inspection process is used to identify or locate mobile app elements. When you need to automate any mobile app scenario, you can follow these steps:

With Appium Inspection, you can get the first step sorted out. For example, let’s say that your app consists of signups. The next step would be to enter your username and password. The Appium inspection process can let you “inspect” your screen and identify the unique text fields. This is the way through which you can enter the username and password in the right fields.

Element inspector tools to identify mobile app elements

You have different tools available in the market through which you can inspect your mobile app elements. These are the top methods used in the industry:

UIAutomatorViewer: This tool is provided by Android Studio to inspect mobile app elements.
Appium Desktop Inspector: The latest Appium GUI version (Appium Desktop) supports a built-in inspector. This inspector can come in handy for both Android and iOS apps, which would need a Mac.

How to use UIAutomatorViewer?

This GUI tool can analyze and scan the Android application’s UI components. To automate any Android app with Appium, the user needs to locate the objects in Application Under Test (AUT).

You can follow the below-mentioned steps to install and use UIAutomatorViewer.

Install Android Studio to access UIAutomatorViewer, which would be installed by default in it.

Method 1: Through Command Prompt

1.1. Open the command prompt
1.2. Type uiautomatorviewer. Press the “Enter” button.

After a couple of seconds, the UIAutomatorViewer window would instantly open.

Method 2: Through file location

Open UIAutomatorViewer from the location of the folder. You can find that UIAutomatorViewer has been installed on your system in a .bat file. This method can let you navigate to the location of the installed folder. Open it. These are the steps to open it:

2.1: Use the location — C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Android\sdk\tools\bin (Replace ‘username’ with the username that you have on your machine)

2.2: The bin folder can contain uiautomatorviewer.

2.3: Select uiautomatorviewer. This would go on to open the UI Automator Viewer window within a few seconds

Any of the methods mentioned above can help you open UI Automator Viewer.

Connect your mobile phone to your system with USB

Before you inspect your mobile app elements, go ahead and connect the mobile device to your system through USB. To ensure that the mobile phone has been connected well, open the command prompt to run the ADB devices command. This command would show the Device ID of the mobile phone. This is to ensure that you have connected the mobile phone properly to the system. Next, open the app you need to inspect.

Inspect mobile app using UI Automator Viewer

Follow the steps given below to inspect your mobile app with UI Automator Viewer:

Click on the Device Screenshot icon, which is a part of the UI Automator Viewer screen.
The popup message can show the information on progress.
After a few seconds, the UI Automator Viewer would process every piece of information on the screen. After doing this, UI Automator Viewer would load the phone screenshot.
Now, bring the mobile cursor to the device screenshot. You can get the information you need on the right side panes

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Here is a gist of what’s happening

After you click on the Device screenshot icon, the UI Automator Viewer will capture the details of every visible object in XML format on the screen. Then it would capture the mobile screen screenshot in PNG format. After capturing both the details, UI Automator Viewer would show these both as a part of the UI.

How does an Appium Inspector perform?

Appium Desktop Inspector leverages similar methods to UIAutomatorViewer for identifying the mobile app elements. This can include the following:

Find element by ClassName
Find element by ID
Find element by XPath
Find element by Accessibility
Find element by Tag

The mobile element properties, namely content-disc, resource-id, name, and text would be similar for UIAutomatorViewer and Appium Desktop Inspector.

How to use Appium Inspector on Cloud?

Appium also supports remote inspection on remote devices. There are a number of cloud-based solutions available that provide a real device cloud for inspecting UI elements while testing mobile apps.

LambdaTest is a cross browser testing platform offering businesses an all-in-one platform to test their apps on 3000+ real browsers, devices, and OS. With LambdaTest for Appium Inspection, you get the following benefits:

Connect with different cloud servers of your choice.
A user-friendly GUI to get the inspection process done hassle-free.
Speed up the Appium inspection process through automated features.
Get accurate results

Get a gist on how to perform app test automation on LambdaTest real device cloud.

Integrating Appium Inspector on LambdaTest

This Appium Inspector meant to manage mobile apps is run by the horsepower of an Appium server. Appium Desktop Inspector is nothing but an Appium client such as Appium’s Java or Python client with a high-end UI. The interface can be used to specify the capabilities of Appium Server Version and Setting. As soon as the Appium Server integrates with the LambdaTest App, interacting with different elements and running other Appium Commands becomes a breeze.

How to use Appium Inspector for app testing?

In this section, we demonstrate how to use Appium Inspector using LambdaTest platform. It’s quite simple, user-friendly and time-saving. It’s highly recommended to switch over to real device testing on cloud as per your needs since it comes along with more benefits related to cost and speed.

Uploading your Application

Upload your application (Android or iOS) to the LambdaTest cloud servers with our REST API. To make this happen, you need to provide your LambdaTest credentials like username and access key in the cURL command for authentication.

Below is a cURL request example for uploading the app with our REST API. Also, you can offer a pathway to the local app or provide an application URL.

For Android:

curl -u "LT_USERNAME:LT_ACCESS_KEY" \
--location --request POST '[https://manual-api.lambdatest.com/app/upload/realDevice'](https://manual-api.lambdatest.com/app/upload/realDevice') \
--form 'name="Android_App"' \
--form 'url="[https://prod-mobile-artefacts.lambdatest.com/assets/docs/proverbial_android.apk](https://prod-mobile-artefacts.lambdatest.com/assets/docs/proverbial_android.apk)"'

Note: Response of the above curl will be an app URL in the below format and will be used in the next step.

App URL:   lt://APP123456789123456789.

Setting the capabilities

When you launch the app, the Appium server will start with the default IP address of 0.0.0.0, and the port assigned would be 4723. You need to set the Appium Server specifications and then choose the one you need from the saved capabilities.

The sets you choose would become a part of the desired capabilities. You can make the necessary changes to it.

Starting an Appium Inspector Session

Choose the Appium Inspector & select LambdaTest from the Cloud Test Providers list.

Configuring your credentials

Enter the LambdaTest userName and access Key. You can find them in your LambdaTest Profile section.

Configuring the Required Capabilities & Starting the Session

Configure the LambdaTest capabilities under the Appium Desktop inspector’s Desired Capabilities tab. Leverage the unique app URL, which is a part of Step 1 for setting the value of the app capability. Here, you will find the list of every capability that LambdaTest supports.

You can visit our Desired Capability Generator and use GUI to generate the Capability Representation.

After completing this, it’s time to run the test. Click on the Start Session.

After starting the session, you can access the video recording with elaborate info and test logs on the LambdaTest App Automation Dashboard.

Inspect UI elements using Appium Desktop Inspector

For exploring the inspection of UI Elements using Appium Desktop Inspector, here is a scenario where you can open the App and inspect the Search Bar. When the tester highlights the search bar with the cursor, you can get the selected element details. You can use these details in the test script to perform various tests on the specified element.

You can also search for an element using its element id, XPath, attribute, package, class, and text through the GUI options provided on the screen, rather than typing the code.

Limitations of Appium Inspector

It doesn’t allow the Android app testing for versions below 4.2.
Appium offers less to no support for hybrid app testing. It’s not possible to test different actions that let you switch applications from native to the web app and a web app to native.
There is no support for running Appium desktop inspector directly on Microsoft Windows.
The Appium team has accepted that it has a few flaws that need to be fixed. To fix that, the Appium team recommends UIAutomatorViewer.

Recent updates on Appium Inspector

The latest version of Appium Inspector is v2022.5.4.

Here are the latest updates:

Monospace font in capability values and names (but make sure that the whitespace doesn’t become a hindrance).
Show mjpeg stream in the place of the static screenshot and include the

appium:mjpegScreenshotUrl
capability that points to an MJPEG streaming server.
Save the info of remote connection with saved sets capabilities.

Conclusion

The job of Appium Desktop is to provide the user with a high-end environment to manage automated web, native, and hybrid app testing. This is to shield the user from anomalies, bugs, and other issues sabotaging the user experience. Every Appium test can be run on different real mobile devices since app monitoring under real user conditions can lead to results with 100% accuracy.

Mobile app testing platforms like LambdaTest let you run Appium testing for mobile apps with less fizzy processes. Get the benefit of Cloud support on real devices when you access this platform. Your testing and quality assurance team can access many devices to manage online from a single Appium-ready platform. With built-in Appium support, your team can start leveraging Appium to automate testing.

Mobile testers needn’t manually download Appium inspector to write and run Appium tests, be it parallel tests or simple tests. With cloud support, teams can find it easier to work than setting up Appium Desktop on-site with no need to expect any help or support from Appium experts often or just to figure out how to use Appium Inspector.

12 Top Android Emulators for Linux

aamritaangappa — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 12:09:00 +0000

Linux has captivated users across the world, owing to its paramount features such as readily available source code, lightweight, higher network performance, and availability of distros such as Ubuntu, Arch Linux, and Fedora. Even though Android consists of a Linux kernel, the core features are Java-written. It’s a well-known fact that Linux doesn’t support Java code. This is the reason why Android apps aren’t supported on Linux.

To ensure that you run Android apps on Linux seamlessly, it’s time for you to depend upon an Android emulator. An Android emulator can mimic the browser, OS, software, hardware, brand performance, and much more on a system that doesn’t generally support the same. This is the best choice for testers who want to know how their Android app would perform in different browsers, OS, brands, and devices. There are a plethora of Android emulators for Linux in the market. Which one would fit you?

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This blog can act as a breadcrumb for those looking for guidance on Android emulators for Linux.

Introduction to Emulators

How cool is an emulator? The cool-o-meter freezes when you don’t necessarily need a time machine to play the 1990s classics such as Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee or Day of the Tentacle on your latest PC version.

No more necessity to burn a hole in your pocket to buy the latest PlayStation or Xbox version. You don’t even have to visit your friend’s place and wait for your turn patiently to play your favorite games.

All you need is an emulator, a device, or a platform that can let you imitate the functionalities and features of different software, hardware, browser, or OS. Even if your OS doesn’t support a particular game or website, or app, thanks to the emulator, you needn’t stay under rocks.

You can play your favorite game and use that mobile app you are fond of on your system or test software, even when the application and the device are generally incompatible. This way, no superpower can stop you from using your favorite Android app on Linux or Mac!

The age of Android Emulators on Linux

Not every user depends upon Windows or macOS 24×7. Linux is still loved by developers across the globe. According to GeeksforGeeks, Linux finds its home among 500 supercomputers termed to be the fastest. They don’t limit themselves to desktop, tablet, or mobile devices but run on space rockets and submarines. Moreover, as per Statcounter, Linux holds 0.96% of the operating system market share worldwide, which indicates that it is still being used by a considerable number of users.

There are die-hard Linux fans who would find it uneasy when their favorite Android app isn’t available on Linux. A Linux-philic app developer wouldn’t rest until they find a solution to develop an Android app on Linux. Any tester would be sipping their cup of coffee with a sigh of relief if they could test on an Android emulator online using Linux. If this is the case, an Android emulator builds the bridge between the Linux user and an Android app, fixes the missing piece of software, browser, or hardware, and wins the heart.

For an Android mobile app tester, an emulator is a boon. It doesn’t matter if your user is on Windows or Linux; all they care about is how your app performs. It’s an obvious fact that 65% of mobile users wouldn’t be wearing rose-tinted glasses in terms of mobile app performance, even if the app belongs to a fortune 500 player. It would take less than a minute for them to uninstall the app if they come across any difficulties.

To avoid this, Android emulators allow you to model a real-time environment to catch bugs faster than Captain Marvel and Thor combined. You can test the application’s performance on a different OS or browsing system on your Android device and know if the interaction would go hand-in-hand or in a zig-zag, confused manner. This reduces the developer-to-QA Analyst turnaround time. Sort out the issues, fix them and log off in time!

So, let’s roll out the details. Here are 12 of the best Android emulators for Linux that we have hand-picked for you!

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12 most powerful Android emulators for Linux

To simplify the life of testers and make them hardy, we have listed down the top 12 Android emulators you can rely upon without second thoughts. After going through the list, you will be able to pick the right emulator for your business and save hassle and money in the long run.

Anbox

Anbox, a free-of-cost and open-source Android emulator for Linux would let any kind of Android mobile app and games run smoothly on the Linux distro. This platform also allows you to run Android apps in the cloud. Anbox goes on to run Android apps in tight box containers. This feature boosts security since it prevents direct data access. Anbox permits you to run your Android app on Linux distribution as far as the modules are all available in the kernel. Moreover, you can also enable your own modules.

Ever since its introduction, Anbox has won the favor of the Linux audience for its seamless performance, flexibility, and speed in allowing you to run the best Android games and apps without any troubles put forth by the Linux system. By placing the Android operating system into a container, the Anbox emulator abstracts hardware access to enable flawless access and optimization.

The silver lining:

It’s open-source, secure, flexible, limit-free, and competent.
Select any Android version of your choice, and run the Android app immediately without any roadblocks.
Now every developer can run their Android apps in Linux, with no inhibitions from different Linux distros.
Anbox wraps up every Android OS component into a well-optimized container. This would also mix and match its core features directly into the Linux machine, offering you a seamless app experience.
Anbox enables state-of-the-art Linux technologies such as containers (LXC) for segregating the Linux system from the emulator.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest is a new-age, modernized testing platform that allows you to test your app on an online device farm of **3000+ **devices and OS combinations. Run mobile app testing and find bugs at jet speed. Not just your public app, you have the liberty to test your locally hosted apps as well. This means that even when your app is in beta mode, you can get the testing done and locate bugs faster than ever.

For Linux users, the LambdaTest tunnel feature and UnderPass for local testing is a boon. This tunnel binary is meant for proxy settings and corporate firewalls, with zero restrictions.
Test any Android app under LinuxOS on LambdaTest within a few minutes, be it a small app or a larger one. You can also load .apk, .zip, or .app files into it directly, making it less archaic with faster testing mechanisms.

Through the visual regression cloud, you can get the info on screen resolution, image, and video alignment easily. LambdaTest comes with cloud support, enabling you to test your Android app on any Linux version at any time, anywhere.

Refer to the below tutorial on mobile app testing to run Android device test.

No need to download it. You can test your Android app on Linux using these simple steps:
Step 1: Create a LambdaTest account and log in. Go to Real Time Testing.

Step 2: Choose the App Testing tab. Select Android, upload your Android app, and choose the device BRAND and DEVICE/OS of your choice.

Step 3: Click START.

A cloud-based Android emulator for app testing will fire up where you can test mobile applications manually on your Linux machine.

The silver lining:

Geolocation testing– the feature where you can witness how your app would perform in different locations.
Mark your bugs with different project management tools like JIRA, Asana, Trello, etc,
Easily sort out and debug native apps in real-time with the support of device and app logs.
Whether it is a basic gaming app or a huge project management tool, LambdaTest treats every app equally. Test any Android app on Linux OS effectively, irrespective of its size and scale.
The testing platform is decluttered for user clarity and is aesthetically appealing.

Genymotion

Genymotion Desktop is one of the leading Android emulators providing you with every sensor, functionality, and feature you need to communicate with the Android environment. This platform allows you to test any Android app on virtual devices meant for testing, development, and demonstration. Genymotion is one of the dominating industry players in the scope of Android emulators for Linux.

This emulator comes along with cloud support. Genymotion finds its compatibility with Android Studio and Android SDK tools. The free edition of Genymotion Desktop is recommended only for personal use rather than for business purposes.

The silver lining:

This platform allows everyone to emulate more than 3000 virtual Android device configurations that include screen size, hardware resolution, image resolution, and Android versions.
The most appealing features include Live logs, identifiers, and file uploads.
Get gyroscope data directly from your Android device to Linux OS.
Enable testing various Android browsers from your Linux system.
The best part is it supports every Android app testing framework, including Espresso, Appium, Robotium, and so on.

Android x86

This open source project lets you take up unofficial Android mobile OS porting. Open Handset Alliance developed this porting to run efficiently on AMD and Intel x86 processors. This latest technology can work more reliably in comparison to RISC-based ARM chips. Originated in 2009 and developed by Chih-Wei Huang and Yi Sun, the last update of Android x86 (based on Android Pie 9.0.0_r54) was on March 25, 2020.

Android-x86 makes the life of a Linux user problem-free by allowing you to leverage a separate ISO for booting in the form of a standalone Android OS and skipping the installation process on a single OS. It runs hassle-free on AMD-oriented software and x86. This emulator demands a virtual machine installation for running the apps installed in the form of a standalone system.

The silver lining:

Network connection configuration is a breeze with inbuilt Wi-Fi support.
Memory storage issues are sorted out, all credit to the ability to transfer the Android device’s memory storage directly to the emulator.
It supports G-sensor and Bluetooth
A terminal emulator is already installed, which would uncomplicate the installation process for you
It offers GRUB-EFI theme support.
Get 100% support for Google services.
It releases timely software updates.

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Android Studio

Android Studio is the must-have software for every Linux user in need of an all-in-one tool to manage both app development and mobile app testing simultaneously. With an Android Virtual Device (AVD), the configuration can be done to convert Android Studio into an emulator. There are plenty of exciting things happening recently around Android Studio updates.

Since it’s the officially recognized Android operating system’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE), you can expect high-end app testing output across multiple Android devices. The in-built emulator can provide you with the key to start the app even faster than the original device. This emulator, in addition to letting you test the app across various devices, can also simulate various features of hardware such as multiple touch inputs, GPS, acceleration sensors, and motion.

The silver lining:

It’s open-source and simple to install.
It can support a number of devices, including televisions, smartwatches, and smartphones.
It comes along with firebase and cloud support.
It provides access to a number of testing methods, such as performance testing and UI testing.

ARChon

ARChon, which means “ruler” in Greek, does own its share of the kingdom in the Android emulators market. This platform cannot be contained inside any virtual machine since there is no installation needed from your side on the Linux system. It uses Google Chrome’s comprehensive runtime and integrates the emulation compound into it. ARChon was initially developed as a part of Google’s official package release of “App Runtime for Chrome.”

This emulator is a bundle of advanced features such as masking an Android app with a ChromeOS app. You can process the native code of the app in the Chrome browser safely. ARChon demystifies the setup of Android emulation on the Chrome browser since Google now supports the ChromeOS platform and has made the Chrome browser’s desktop version stagnant with respect to the ARC Chrome. ARchon fixes this bottleneck by modifying the package on its own.

The silver lining:

This emulator can run on different kernel versions, allowing you to test your Android app across different Linux platforms easily.
Every developer can easily reinvent, rebuild, modify, run and test their app directly on the Linux system.
This open-source emulator allows you to perform tests on different apps with no virtual machines.
Don’t worry about the latest updates on Chrome Browser. ARChon automatically updates itself as and when there is a new release.

BlissRoms

This open-source OS provides a huge library of options in security features and customizations. The latest version available is Bliss OS 15 for Android (Alpha) for Android 12. However, the currently supported versions are Bliss OS 11.x and Bliss OS 14.x. It’s the best choice to test small-level Android apps.

To use BlissRoms, you need to understand the burning process of ISO images to a portable USB drive or a blank DVD, separate your hard disk and make changes in the boot device order as soon as your computer kickstarts. This product would be an evergreen favorite for novice and hobbyists who love to play around with Android emulators.

The silver lining:

Enable secure options with the power of fDroid & microG.
Optimize battery consumption.
High-end User interface (UI) suitable for both Desktop and Tablet or even a hybrid version of both.
Get plenty of customization and themes.

Android Virtual Device

If you are a person who believes in roots more than branches, this is the right Android emulator for you. This is an extended version of Android Studio IDE where you can simulate videos, phone calls, network speeds, hardware sensors, and text messages. You can connect any sort of external device through a portable USB. Enable virtual devices via a graphical user interface (GUI) or command line meant for live testing.

How about testing your Android app on Augmented reality? This is the most promising feature of this emulator. This emulator can simulate hardware sensors and screen rotation. You can also get access to the Google Play store.

The silver lining:

Experience the power of high-end navigational gestures.
Record your screen and take screenshots seamlessly.
Get ARCore and a virtual scene camera.
Create Android emulators for Linux on various devices such as Android tablets, Automotive OS, TV devices, and wearables.

Andro VM

Andro VM is the brainchild of Genymotion, which leaves no stone left unturned to provide the best Android emulator for the masses. The features are quite compatible with Android SDK, sensor events, and much more. Even though it has plenty of positives to look upon, you need to install and configure a Virtual Box in your Linux system.

Similar to Genymotion, this latest Android emulator for Linux boasts a multitude of features under a single package. This is what makes it one of the best Android Emulators for Linux.

The silver lining:

The offline feature is its differentiating point. Test any apps even when there is no internet connectivity.
Get built-in support for OpenGL, and get the best rendering options for your Android device.
A guest can enable Net Sharing with the host.
Since it’s available for both 32 and 64-bit systems, its functioning would be smoother despite variations in the kernel’s instruction length.

Shashlik

Shashlik is another QA-loved product that has caught industry bugs in recent days. Since it’s still under observation (experiment mode), it’s only available for Arch Linux and Ubuntu. Also, we cannot directly term it as an Android emulator. The performance of Shashlik depends upon the creation of Android runtime in the background. It leverages the Android emulator of the Android Software Development kit provided by Google. This lets you run Android apps directly on your Linux desktop.

This method is more effective than installing an Android Virtual Machine or relying upon Google Chrome extensions for loading different APKs. This way, it lets you run Android apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and so on with the same power and flexibility as a normal Linux app. In the near future, Shashlik could play the role of a container alone.

The silver lining:

No need for browsers or VirtualBox.
It sheds away the typical emulation technique and introduces deployment of barebone app installation through APK files.
It supports Houdini Binary Translator for running android applications leveraging ARM binary code.
It supports SD cards.
You get the pre-installed version of APKpure. This lets you download any kind of open-source Android application (APK) apps, files, and games to run on different Android devices and gadgets such as computers, phones, and smartwatches.

Jar Of Beans

Jar of Beans is a simple-to-use, portable Android emulator which runs version 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean), the most loved Android OS formerly. This classic emulator allows you to run at a 1280×768 level of screen resolution. All you need is 1GB of RAM to run any Android app. Jar of Beans comes along with “n” number of configuration options. For example, if you choose 1280×768 screen resolution or above that, the Android interface would shift to the tablet mode of Android.

Install APK files from your computer’s internal memory storage through a button. Access many more buttons for volume control. Get an ADB interface to connect to your emulated Android system directly. It’s a portable emulator where the latest beta version lets experience more advanced features. That’s a promising sign! The entire execution process is quite simple.

The silver lining:

This emulator allows you to open almost every APK that’s directly downloadable.
Earn the support of Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM).
Create a virtual SD card of the size you prefer.
Get multi-user support for saving their own customized settings.

Android SDK

Android SDK has built a strong foundation for itself in the realms of Android emulation for Linux. The majority of the app developers who are into Android development would prefer Android SDK over any other platform for building their app from scratch.

That’s the reason why Android SDK is chosen by them, out of trust, integrity, and brand value. The positive side of the fence involves elaborate online tutorials and high-end documentation.

The silver lining:

Android SDK offers built-in support that includes the best-of-industry features like GPS, Wi-Fi, SD Card support, Sensors, and much more.
The emulation would be one among the fastest in town, with various applications, features, and configurations that ARCore — Google’s AR platform.
Android SDK provides developers with an opportunity for customization.

Conclusion

The number of Android app users is growing. According to Statista, as of January 2022, Android is still leading the mobile OS market with a share of 70% in comparison to 25% of iOS users. Choosing the right Android emulator is of undeniable importance if you want to experience the best and worst of your Android app on Linux OS and debug ASAP. Android emulators are no more limited to manual processes.

With Cloud technology, the previously barren features are now fixed, making it easy for developers and testers all over the globe. Ever since the pandemic, work from home has become the norm. What’s more? Android emulators for Linux on Cloud lets you sit in the comfort of your home or coffee shop and perform your role perfectly.

DevOps integration has made the communication process a mere cakewalk. It’s time for testers to think more about productivity and free less about the bugs. We hope that the list of these 12 top Android Emulators for Linux can help out each and every development team aspiring to build globally accoladed Android apps.