Struggling with the challenges of Internet Explorer Online? Don’t worry! We are here for you. Our article will help you understand the unique challenges that are connected to Internet Explorer Online testing. We’ll also understand why it still remains a major problem and how you can effectively solve these hurdles during your testing process.
While modern browsers like Chrome and Safari have almost captured all the users and developers, Internet Explorer is still a relevant option. This is because in many corporate environments, legacy systems, and applications, this is still being used. Even after the official end of life in June 2022, Internet Explorer is being relied on by numerous organizations, which makes it a critical requirement for all developers and testers.
Why Is It Important To Test on Internet Explorer?
Despite being outdated and the official support being terminated, Internet Explorer remains essential in the testing process due to several reasons. To properly improve our understanding about this process, let us go through some of the major reasons in this regard:
- Many organizations still use legacy systems which require Internet Explorer for specific applications or Internet sites. These sites were usually developed several years ago and cannot support the modern Internet standards. Migrating these to modern browsers is often a very time-consuming and costly process. Therefore, the organizations continue using Internet Explorer for the sake of compatibility.
- Various corporate and government organizations made it mandatory to use Internet Explorer for internal applications. This implementation is due to long-standing policies, regulatory requirements, or vendor compatibility issues. Another reason is that organizations put a higher priority on stability over modernization.
- A major number of internet sites and enterprise solutions were built to be compatible with Internet Explorer. Even to this day, these platforms may use proprietary technologies such as ActiveX controls or older versions of JavaScript. In cases like these, Internet Explorer becomes a very important component for proper internal operations.
- A huge section of the global internet population, especially in a specific region or industry, continues to use Internet Explorer. Therefore, if you ignore IE in testing, it will result in a sub-optimal user experience for this particular segment. It will also lead to customer dissatisfaction and potential revenue loss.
Challenges of Internet Explorer Online Testing
Based on our knowledge and understanding, we have created a list of some of the most common yet daunting challenges of implementing Internet Explorer Online testing:
Compatibility Issues with Modern Web Standards
Internet Explorer does not completely support modern web standards. These standards mainly include CSS3, HTML5, and ECMAScript 6. All these compatibility issues can lead to errors like:
- The web pages may not display correctly or certain elements may not be styled as intended on the web page. This mainly happens due to rendering issues or incompatible rendering standards.
- The modern JavaScript features and libraries may not function properly on Internet Explorer. This will lead to unexpected behavior or broken functionality of these specific elements.
- The older rendering engine often struggles with resource heavy modern web pages. This will lead to slowdown times and also reduce the overall performance of your web application.
Lack of Developer Tools and Features
In contrast to modern browsers, Internet Explorer’s developer tools are limited and less intuitive. These limitations can be massively challenging when you’re trying to perform the following operations:
- Identifying and resolving issues can be a hugely time consuming process due to the limited debugging capabilities that these browsers offer.
- With the DevTools, you will face massive disadvantages while inspecting HTML and CSS elements.
- Internet Explorer does not have a comprehensive performance profiling tool which will make it challenging for you to optimize the performance of the web applications.
Security Vulnerabilities
Internet Explorer is highly vulnerable to security challenges. This is because, unlike modern browsers, Internet Explorer does not receive regular updates and security patches. Therefore, while testing the performance of your web application on Internet Explorer, you must pay proper attention towards the following areas:
- You must test the functioning of your application against certain vulnerabilities that are specific to Internet Explorer. These vulnerabilities can include outdated SSL and TLS protocols or Cross Site Scripting attacks.
- Internet Explorer still uses various legacy security features like compatibility view and ActiveX controls. So, you must pay proper attention towards managing these features for preventing any security loopholes.
Limited Automation and Tool Support
Most of the modern automation testing tools do not provide support or have limited support for Internet Explorer. So, this will be a massive issue hindering your automation efforts. Let us understand some of the major limitations that can arise due to this issue:
- Testers will need to rely more on manual testing, which is not only a time consuming process but is also prone to various errors that can arise due to human involvement.
- Due to automation gaps, you will face results like lower test coverage which will increase the risk of undetected errors within the core framework of your application.
- To tackle these issues, some teams may depend on outdated or less effective testing tools that are specifically designed for Internet Explorer. Most of these tools might not integrate well with modern continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines.
Performance Bottlenecks
The architecture of Internet Explorer, particularly the JavaScript engine, is less efficient than those of modern browsers. These limitations can cause the following errors during the application development and testing process:
- Complex scripts or large apps can experience significant performance bottlenecks.
- IE has a negative reputation for its memory management issues. These issues can lead to memory leaks and degraded performance over time.
- Dynamic content loading, including AJAX requests or heavy Client Side Scripting, will experience lags or delays while conducted on Internet Explorer.
Solutions For Effective Internet Explorer Online Testing
Now that we have finished understanding all the major challenges of Internet Explorer Online testing, let us divert our attention towards some of the major solutions that can help you effectively resolve these issues:
- Embrace Cross-Browser Testing Tools
There are various cloud-based testing platforms that support Internet Explorer. These platforms will allow you to run web applications on various versions of this browser. To further improve our understanding regarding this, let us consider the example of LambdaTest as our discussion point:
LambdaTest is an AI-powered cloud testing platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. This device farm allows you to test your app on various popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge online, Safari, and more.
You can also use LambdaTest to test your websites and web apps on Internet Explorer online. LambdaTest also offers manual and automation testing on Internet Explorer online. This is because after executing the test scripts, it will automatically generate a detailed test report with multiple videos and screenshots. Using these elements, you can easily pinpoint the faulty element and take the required actions.
- Use Polyfills and Shims For Compatibility
Polyfills and Shims are scripts that add modern functionality to older browsers that do not support certain features natively. Implementing these can address compatibility issues like the following:
- Using polyfills, you can add HTML5 elements, CSS3 properties, and other features that are not natively supported by Internet Explorer.
- Tools like Babel can transpile modern JavaScript into a version compatible with Internet Explorer. This process will let you verify that modern JavaScript code works seamlessly in older browsers as well.
- We also advise the testers to use CSS resets and render prefixes to ensure consistent styling across different browsers. This approach also helps you to ensure the proper styling of your visual elements on Internet Explorer.
- Perform Manual and Automation Testing
For manual testing, we advise the testers to navigate through the application in Internet Explorer. This practice will let you identify usability issues, layout inconsistencies, and browser-specific bugs. This step is especially useful when you’re trying to verify animations, visual elements, and interactive components.
For conducting automated testing on Internet Explorer, you can utilize tools like Selenium WebDriver. It natively supports Internet Explorer and can execute the repetitive tasks like form submissions or navigation sequences.
- Optimize the Performance of Internet Explorer Online
To handle the performance limitations of Internet Explorer, you can implement the following processes during the web application testing process:
- Firstly, you must attempt to reduce the dependency on JavaScript. You can implement this process by simplifying complex scripts, deferring non-essential scripts, and using efficient JavaScript libraries that are compatible with Internet Explorer.
- You should also aim to optimize the CSS and HTML elements by using lightweight and clean sources. It is also effective to minimize DOM manipulation and avoid heavy animations which can degrade the performance in Internet Explorer.
- While handling images, videos, and other resources, we advise the testers to implement lazy loading techniques. This implementation will help you to minimize the initial page load time and also improve the overall performance of your web application.
- Ensure Security Compliance
Although Internet Explorer is susceptible to security vulnerabilities, there are various security measures that you can take to ensure the proper usage and storage of sensitive customer information throughout the browser:
- Firstly, you must ensure that the application adheres to the latest security standards, including SSL and TLS protocols. It is also important to disable outdated protocols that Internet Explorer may still support.
- Next, you must focus on implementing strong input validation techniques for preventing SQL injection, XSS, and other common forms of cyber attacks.
- The final step in this regard should be deploying CSP headers. These headers will help you prevent unwanted scripts and reduce the risk of XSS attacks. This is also useful when you’re trying to verify the comments of web applications on older outdated browsers like Internet Explorer.
The Bottom Line
Based on all the factors that we discussed in this article, we can safely state that Internet Explorer will remain a relevant option in specific environments. This will motivate the testers to continue testing and optimization for this browser. All the challenges related to IE testing require targeted solutions that we have descriptively analyzed in this article.
By using these solutions, the testers can not only navigate through the complexities of IE testing but can also deploy a proper testing culture. This will, in turn, elevate the quality of the application’s performance on Internet Explorer.
Finally, we advise organizations to consider transitioning to modern browsers with a long-term perspective. Down the line, it will become even more challenging to maintain the support of your systems and other operations on Internet Explorer.