Microsoft Edge online offers advanced features essential for effective web application testing and provides an effective platform for comprehensive testing. This blog will explore how Microsoft Edge online can help improve quality assurance in various areas, from debugging to automation. Edge provides solutions to enhance testing and ensure web applications perform consistently. We’ll also discuss how these advanced capabilities can strengthen your QA processes.
Advanced Features In Edge to Enhance Testing Process
Here’s a breakdown of some advanced features in Edge that can enhance the automation testing process.
Developer Tools
Microsoft Edge Online contains Developer Tools that offer a suite of features for examining, debugging, and optimizing websites.
Element Inspector
The Element Inspector examines the HTML structure, CSS styles, and DOM of the web pages. This tool allows the testers to:
- Examine HTML Structure: Navigate the DOM tree to understand how the page is constructed. This helps identify incorrect tags, misplaced elements, or complex nesting that might cause layout issues.
- Modify Elements: Make changes to the HTML and CSS to see how they affect the layout. This is invaluable for testing design changes or debugging styling issues.
- Debug Styling Issues: This identifies why certain styles are applied or overridden.
Network Tab
The Network tab provides a detailed view of all network requests the webpage makes.
- Monitor Resource Loading: Track loaded resources, their load times, and failed requests to spot performance issues and ensure proper loading.
- Analyze Status Codes: Verify HTTP status codes to catch errors like 404 and Internal Server Error.
- View Request and Response Data: Review headers, cookies, and response bodies to understand data exchanged by the application.
Performance Profiler
The Performance Profiler analyzes the performance of the website by profiling JavaScript execution, rendering times, and memory usage.
Debugging Tools
Edge’s debugging tools set breakpoints, step through code execution line-by-line and inspect variables to identify and fix bugs in web application logic.
Automate Testing with WebDriver
WebDriver enables automated testing by simulating user interactions and testing across various scenarios. It integrates with popular testing frameworks like Selenium, which provides a platform for creating and running automated test suites. WebDriver is essential for maintaining code quality and consistent behavior, and here is why:
Simulate User Interactions
WebDriver simulates user interactions to ensure the web application responds to various inputs by testing the user experience.
Test Across Different Scenarios
WebDriver can create complex test scenarios to cover various use cases. The functionality of the website can be validated and catch regressions early by automating these scenarios,
Integration with Selenium
Edge’s WebDriver works smoothly with Selenium. This integration allows the testers to utilize existing Selenium scripts and tools. It also supports cross-browser testing to ensure consistent behavior across multiple browsers.
Automate Regression Testing
Automated regression testing with WebDriver ensures that code changes don’t introduce new issues. Regressions can be caught early to maintain high code quality by running automated tests regularly.
Compatibility Testing with IE Mode
Microsoft Edge Online provides IE Mode to run websites in Internet Explorer compatibility mode. This is important for organizations with legacy web applications with specific requirements tied to Internet Explorer. Here’s why IE Mode is crucial for effective compatibility testing:
Test Legacy Applications
Many organizations still maintain legacy web applications that were designed for Internet Explorer. IE Mode allows testers to test these applications within Microsoft Edge online to ensure they continue functioning correctly without needing a separate IE installation. This is useful when transitioning from older systems to modern platforms.
Ensure Compatibility Across Versions
IE Mode lets testers emulate different versions of Internet Explorer, which is essential for compatibility testing. Testers and developers can test the application in various modes to ensure it behaves as expected across different compatibility levels. This reduces the risk of errors and improves the overall user experience for users on older systems.
Reduce the Risk of Errors
IE Mode can identify and resolve compatibility issues early in the development process. This helps reduce the risk of errors and bugs impacting users who rely on specific Internet Explorer behaviors or features.
Improved Testing Processes
IE Mode simplifies testing processes by allowing you to test for modern and legacy compatibility within a single browser. This saves time and resources to maintain separate environments for compatibility testing.
Privacy and Security Testing with InPrivate Mode
InPrivate mode in Microsoft Edge online doesn’t store cookies, history, or other session data. It’s used for private and secure web testing.
Test Privacy Features
InPrivate mode is a tool for testing privacy-related features. Testers can simulate a browsing session where users’ activities remain private because it doesn’t store browsing history, cookies, or other persistent data. This is useful for testing scenarios involving sensitive information such as user authentication, personal data, or secure transactions.
Identify Unwanted Data Persistence
The inPrivate mode can simulate a clean browsing environment. This enables testers to test whether the application leaves behind unwanted traces, like cookies, local storage, or cached data. Testers can identify and fix potential privacy risks by browsing in InPrivate mode and checking for leftover data.
Test Security Mechanisms
InPrivate mode can be used to test the web application’s security mechanisms because it doesn’t retain session data, and testers can simulate scenarios like session timeouts, authentication flow, and user logout. This ensures the application handles security without inadvertently storing sensitive information after a user logs out or closes the browser.
Validate Compliance with Privacy Regulations
Many privacy regulations require strict handling of user data. InPrivate mode helps validate compliance to test how the application manages user data in a privacy-conscious environment. Testers can ensure your application aligns with these regulations and doesn’t retain unnecessary user information by running tests in InPrivate mode.
Test for Cross-Site Tracking and Third-Party Cookies
InPrivate mode’s enhanced tracking prevention helps the test of how the application interacts with third-party cookies and cross-site tracking. This is crucial for evaluating the privacy implications of external resources and ensuring that the site doesn’t unintentionally track users across different websites.
Extensions for Enhanced Testing
Extensions enhance Microsoft Edge’s functionality, offering additional tools and features to improve the testing workflow. Microsoft Edge Online provides various options for testers, including support for extensions from both the Microsoft Store and the Chrome Web Store.
AdBlock and Content Filtering
Extensions like AdBlock allow you to test your web application in environments with content filtering. This helps the testers understand how ads and other content are affected by blockers to identify potential issues or ensure that essential elements are not blocked. It’s also useful for creating a distraction-free testing environment.
Security Scanners
Security scanners identify vulnerabilities and improve the security of the web application. It scans for security risks to provide valuable insights.
Automated Test Scripts
Extensions like Selenium IDE allow testers to create and execute automated test scripts directly within Microsoft Edge Online. This automates repetitive tasks and simulates user interactions. Automated test scripts help ensure consistent behavior across test cases and reduce the time required for manual testing.
Lighthouse for Performance and Accessibility Testing
Lighthouse is an extension for automated performance and accessibility testing. It provides a detailed analysis of the web application. It also optimizes the site for speed and accessibility to ensure a better user experience.
Customizable Extensions
The extensibility of Microsoft Edge online allows you to customize your testing environment. Testers can install extensions that provide additional developer tools, enhance debugging capabilities, or integrate with external services. This flexibility allows you to tailor your testing workflow to specific needs to create a more efficient and effective testing process.
Cross-Platform Testing and Compatibility
Microsoft Edge’s cross-platform availability allows testers to ensure consistent behavior and performance of their web applications across various devices and operating systems. Microsoft Edge Online can be accessed over a cloud platform like LambdaTest for cloud testing to meet the needs of modern web development.
LambdaTest is a comprehensive test orchestration and execution platform that leverages artificial intelligence to facilitate the seamless and efficient running of manual and automated tests on a large scale. With a focus on providing a versatile testing environment, LambdaTest empowers users to conduct both real-time and automated testing across an extensive array of environments, encompassing over 3000 configurations, including browsers and real mobile devices.
Consistent User Experience
Testers can verify that the web application delivers a consistent user experience by testing with Edge on multiple platforms. This includes checking layout, design, and navigation to ensure they work across desktop and mobile devices.
Identify Platform-Specific Issues
Cross-platform testing detects platform-specific issues from varying operating systems. Testing touch-based mobile interactions differs from desktop mouse-based testing. Testing on multiple platforms ensures the application works properly in diverse environments.
Cross-Device Simulation
Edge’s cross-device features allow testers to simulate different device experiences to provide a way to test responsiveness and adaptability. This is useful when checking how the application adapts to different screen sizes and orientations. This helps them identify issues that might impact user experience on smaller screens or tablets.
Enhanced Compatibility
Edge’s cross-platform support ensures compatibility with different browser versions and operating systems. This is important for reaching various audiences and reducing the risk of unexpected behavior on specific platforms. Testers can detect and resolve compatibility issues early in development by testing across platforms.
Improve Performance and Accessibility
Cross-platform testing also provides insights into performance and accessibility on various devices. This allows you to optimize your application for speed and accessibility to ensure it meets the needs of users with diverse requirements and preferences.
Policies Management
Edge’s policy management features simulate different user settings and configurations during testing. By defining specific policies, testers can create controlled environments that reflect different user preferences, security settings, or organizational requirements. Here’s how policy management can enhance your testing:
- Simulate different user environments by applying custom policies. This helps ensure your website functions correctly across various settings.
- If an organization has specific browser policies, developers can use Edge’s policy management to verify that the web application complies with these requirements.
- Policy management allows you to test how changes in user configurations affect your web application
Workspaces for Organization
workspaces feature creates isolated environments to manage different testing projects and configurations. This keeps the testing environments organized and avoids conflicts.
- Creating isolated workspaces helps keep them separate. This avoids cross-contamination and makes it easier to focus on individual tasks.
- Workspaces allow you to set up different configurations for each testing project. This simulates various user environments or tests across multiple platforms.
- Workspaces can also be used to manage collaborative testing efforts. Developers can share workspaces with team members without affecting other testing environments.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using these advanced features, you can ensure comprehensive and practical testing of your web applications on Microsoft Edge online. Whether it’s automated testing with WebDriver, compatibility checks, or security and accessibility assessments, Microsoft Edge online provides various tools and capabilities to meet your testing needs.
