Browsing the BrowserStack

With upcoming new projects, I have received a recommendation to test out a relatively new testing platform that could potentially help me with tests that require visible results of smartphone or tablet devices we might not currently physically own but need to test our private web environment on them so we are sure everything is visible correctly on older and newer devices.

As you know, there are hundreds of mobile and tablet devices that have easy access to the Internet, and if you want to be sure that your web environment works correctly, you can emulate the environment on your computer, but, for the most accurate results, you need to test it on the real device. You cannot buy every device you need to test your environment on, but if you are actually willing to do that, it would be very monetary and time-consuming.

What is BrowserStack?

BrowserStack is a cloud web and mobile testing platform that provides developers the ability to test their websites and mobile applications across on-demand browsers, operating systems, and real mobile devices.

After visiting the BrowserStack website, everything is clear and very intuitive. I was testing the “Live” and “Automate” products that BrowserStack provides. You can use them for free for a limited time only. I have found out that the limited time is actually not long enough for people to get the idea of how useful it might be for testing purposes, but no worries, I am here to share short thoughts about both of the previously named products after two weeks of testing.

Thanks to an app provided by BrowserStack named “Local,” you are able to force the private environment to work on any device or desktop provided by BrowserStack. Plus, you do not have to worry about your private environment since BrowserStack wipes out all data after every testing session, so nothing is being shared with anyone except you.

BrowserStack Live

In the “Live” product you can run your cross-browser tests on a range of real Android and iOS devices for the most accurate test results. It is a real-time stream of the physical device of your choosing which you can freely interact with and browse through your local, dev, or public web environment. There are a lot of devices that you can choose from, for example, Samsung Galaxy S20 / S20+, iPhone 11 Pro / Pro Max, or macOS Big Sur. There was not a visible delay during the interaction with the real-time stream and everything was working as you would expect.

There is a feature of real-time debugging of your cross browsing since you can use BrowserStack pre-installed developer tools which are also easy to use. I have found “Live” useful, simple, and very intuitive with a clear and friendly design you will not get lost in.

Using BrowserStack helps me provide more feedback in a shorter amount of time when it comes to testing on several different devices with highly detailed screenshots I am able to use in documentations.

BrowserStack Automate

And last, but not least, with the “Automate” product, you have the flexibility to scale as your testing grows, without having to worry about updating versions, adding devices, managing capacity, and, most importantly, maintaining stability. BrowserStack provides us the reliability of a fast, constantly available Selenium testing infrastructure that supports all the testing in your CI pipeline. You can run hundreds of tests concurrently to speed up the execution time of your test suite by more than 10x.

I am a beginner when it comes to Visual Studio and C#, but I was able to write a small test-case that was connected to our private web environment that included a short verification of buttons that could be done only on our website. BrowserStack Automate with Selenium C# was working perfectly, and I was able to see the results right after the test was executed, and, as a nice bonus, after you finish automated testing sessions, BrowserStack provides you video feedback of how the desired device was working with the testing script.

Thanks to “Capabilities Generator”, I can save some amount of time too. After I choose the desired device I am planning to test my scripts on, the capabilities generator will generate everything needed before I put it into my code.

Video feedback is free to download so you can share it with your devs or use it in a short presentation of features on different devices. BrowserStack Automate provides the possibility to test one written script in C# on multiple different devices all at once with video feedback and with different kinds of logs (network, selenium, console, etc.). You can browse through each of the executed steps you got in your script and debug them since BrowserStack provides a simple useful log of executed steps, and, thanks to all of that, you are able to save yourself a big amount of time.

Final Thoughts

I am happy I came across such a useful application that can save me and my colleagues time since this app is simple to use, very intuitive, and now able to work with private local environments. In the upcoming days, I will make sure to use BrowserStack in recent or upcoming projects or small things for myself because I enjoy working with it.

Thanks for reading!

We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Jan Novák, QA Specialist of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.