In the current generation of application testing and production, efficiency is one of the most important factors that have influenced the lives of developers and testers. This is because quickly delivering high-quality applications is becoming one of the top priorities for maintaining a positive brand image of the company.
To efficiently implement such a practice, various innovative features like Selenium WebDriver, headless browser testing, and implementation of cross-browser testing are crucial. While implementing these practices, the application developers and testers should also try to gather adequate information on the requirements of the target audience to properly customize the application.
With this article, we are going to understand how app developers can improve test execution speed in the modern application development lifecycle. We will also understand the contribution of Selenium WebDriver and headless browser towards achieving this goal.
Understanding the Market of Automation Testing
During the early years of the Internet, app-developing companies had dedicated human developers who would individually verify the functioning of all the elements present in an application. However modern apps consist of thousands of different elements that need to be verified both individually and as a combined infrastructure. So, it is almost impossible to compile this process depending on manual testers.
As a substitute, the system can use advanced automation testing practices which use a text file consisting of all the required parameters and datasets. With this text file, the system can emulate human interactions and communications. Based on these studies, the system will develop a detailed report justifying the usability and user interactivity of the application.
The app developers can also implement changes in the predetermined parameters of the test file to customize the requirements according to the project. It is also possible to store huge segments of existing automation test data and reuse them in future projects.
However, automation testing comes with a massive disadvantage in the form of investment. These investments will cover the charges for multiple plugins, libraries, and dependencies critical for the proper execution process. So, companies must have enough resources to justify these transitions.
The World of Headless Browser Testing
Headless browser testing is the process of initiating a browser instance without its Graphical User Interface. This means that the system will not have to render all the user interface elements, visual aesthetics, and other elements of the UI. This process massively improves the efficiency of the browser instances and also the loading time for the test case execution process. Modern automation testing frameworks and test suites like Selenium natively support the use of headless browser testing.
For instance, while using Selenium, the application developers can access the headless counterparts of Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome is also available with the help of certain dependencies and library inclusions.
Headless browser testing can also be beneficial when the application developers are using low-end systems that cannot render multiple GUIs at the same time. Finally, many developers believe that headless browser testing has a massive benefit in improving the efficiency of parallel test cases.
Integration of Selenium
Selenium is one of the veterans in the segment of automated web app testing. Its open-source infrastructure consists of multiple individual tools that assist the developers at different stages of the application testing process. The core framework of Selenium is based on the popular programming language, JavaScript.
This means that the developers and testers do not have to go through an extensive learning curve for writing test cases with Selenium. Moreover, since Selenium is open source, it does not require any investment for its features. However, this test suite is only applicable when the application developers are working with web applications. This means that for other applications like native apps hybrid apps and cross-platform apps, Selenium won’t be usable.
Now let us briefly understand the rule of all the tools present in the Selenium Test Suite:
- We will begin our discussion with the Selenium WebDriver as it is one of the most important components of the entire testing infrastructure. With the Selenium WebDriver, the application developers can begin, execute and redirect the test cases to the respective elements present in a web application. The Selenium WebDriver can also conduct test cases in a native environment of multiple modern browsers without dedicated test engines.
- While using Selenium, the application developers can execute codeless automation testing using the Selenium Integrated Development Environment. This tool analyzes user interactions and generates automation test cases in real-time. So, for using it, the app developer simply has to interact with the application like a normal user.
- Next, in certain cases, the app developers will be forced to manually write the automation test scripts. For such a scenario, the Selenium client API will be highly useful. This is because it allows you to write automation test cases in any of the preferred programming languages like Python, Java, Ruby, and many others.
- Finally, the Selenium grid has an important role in improving the efficiency of modern complex test cases. This is because it can handle multiple test instances at the same time and redirect them to a target element. Using this tool, it is also possible to initiate multiple instances of different test configurations on different systems.
Advantages of Cross-Browser Testing
While improving the test execution speed, the application developers can benefit a lot from the integration of cross-browser testing. This is because it helps the testers to verify the stability and usability of the application irrespective of shifts in operating system, device hardware, and software configurations.
With the help of cross-browser testing, it is possible to reuse a single test instance on multiple browser drivers. Moreover, app developers can benefit a lot from the integration of cross-browser testing with automation testing. This will allow the system to automatically conduct the test instances on multiple browsers at the same time.
Improving the Test Execution Speeds
To simplify the understanding process for new automation testers and developers, we have created a list of some of the important parameters, features, and practices that can help to improve the test execution speeds:
- Testing an application on real devices is highly essential to understand its functioning based on multiple use case scenarios. However, the setup and maintenance process of a real device lab is very complex and expensive. It also slows down the application testing process drastically. Instead, app developers can use cloud platforms that achieve similar test results while eliminating physical labs and geolocation barriers. These platforms also integrate legacy devices and parallel testing. To achieve all of these goals, cloud platforms use real devices present on remote servers that can be accessed through the Internet. Let us learn more about these platforms with LambdaTest:
For the basic introduction, we can say that LambdaTest is a smart digital experience testing cloud that helps businesses test their products faster and better. It lets you do real-time and automation testing on various devices and environments.
It supports the test execution from multiple automation testing frameworks and suites like Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright. LambdaTest is also suitable for the verification of web pages that have local host servers. Many companies from around the world, more than 10,000 with over 2 million users, trust LambdaTest for their testing requirements.
- The application developers can also try to customize their test cases and optimize them. For instance, it is very important to analyze and identify any slow-running or redundant test cases. Removing or optimizing them can massively improve the speed of the entire process.
- As we already mentioned earlier, the integration of parallel testing has a massive role in improving the coordination and speed of the application development project.
- It is very important to properly isolate certain test cases so that they do not rely on the state of the previous test cases. Moreover, the developers must remember that they can easily run isolated test cases in parallel configurations without affecting the functionality of the existing test cases. This process also helps to eliminate errors like false positives and false negatives.
- While using headless browsers, the application developers should also integrate agile methodologies like continuous integration and continuous development. This process will automatically trigger the test cases and help them to run in a headless environment without the intrusion of any graphical environment.
- The integration of browser profiles can massively allow developers to save useful settings, user preferences, and cookies. This process will, in turn allow the faster test setup by reusing these profiles at the time of browser initialization.
- The Selenium WebDriver provides various modern methods like explicit and implicit wait that can highly affect the functioning of the automation testing process. With the help of explicit and implicit wait, it is possible to automatically pause the execution of the testing process until the completion of the previous one. After this process, the system will automatically initiate the testing process and display the final result. All this is useful when the app developers are working on certain elements that are closely integrated and rely on each other for proper functioning.
- The application developers and testers must plan to minimize the amount of test data that they will require to set up before running the automation test case. Various techniques like test data factories or test data generation can help the app developers to create data on the go whenever it is required by the application testing lifecycle. We would also advise the app developers to include the business and production teams during the test planning stage. It will allow to create a basic awareness of the current progress in the application development life cycle.
These were some of the most important practices that can help app developers to improve the execution speed of the application. However, we would advise the developers to go through the documentation of Selenium WebDriver to find certain other features that might be useful regarding the unique requirements of their application.
The Conclusion
Hope now it’s clear how to efficiently implement such a practice, various innovative features like Selenium WebDriver, headless browser testing, and implementation of cross-browser testing are crucial. With this article, we analyzed some of the best practices, parameters, and features that can help app testers to improve the test execution speed of the modern application development and testing infrastructure.
The integration of automation testing plays a vital role in this process. So, app developers should constantly integrate multiple new trends and innovations that are revolutionizing automation testing practices. The choice of a suitable automation testing tool plays a critical role in the utilization of the test environment.
Companies can conduct seminars and awareness campaigns to spread the required knowledge regarding healthy automation testing practices. Finally, developers should try their best to constantly update their applications to make them suitable according to the standards of the market.

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