Introduction to Selenium

Selenium is a free (open source) automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. But this Selenium is certainly not limited to just that, web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well. It is quite similar to HP Quick Test Pro (QTP) only that Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications. Selenium is not just a single tool but a suite of software, each catering to different testing needs of an organization. Most Selenium QA Engineers focus on the one or two tools that most meet the needs of their project, however learning all the tools will give you many different options for approaching different test automation problems.

 The entire suite of tools results in a rich set of testing functions specifically geared to the needs of testing of web applications of all types. These operations are highly flexible, allowing many options for locating UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behavior. One of Selenium’s key features is the support for executing one’s tests on multiple browser platforms. In Selenium there is no feature such as Object Repository/Recovery Scenario.

Selenium consist of four components

1.      Selenium IDE

2.      Selenium RC

3.      Selenium Grid

4.      Selenium WebDriver    

    

Why should we prefer Selenium?

Same Test Script can run on Multiple Web Browsers

Often QA engineers have to write several test scripts to check the performance of the web application across different web browsers. Selenium allows testers to write the test script once, and run it on multiple browsers to test the web application. The feature allows developers to test complex web application without repeating the test steps. Also, we can easily check how the application works across different browser versions.

Option to Choose Programming Language

Some test automation tools require testing professionals to write the test scripts using a specific programming language. But in Selenium we can write our own programming language to automate our Website. Thus, It is also an ideal solution for users of Selenium IDE who want to write tests in a more expressive programming language than the Selenese HTML table format.

Supports Multiple Testing Frameworks

Along with being a web application testing tool, Selenium can also be used as a GUI driving library. So the users have options to use Selenium for wrapping test scripts in other test frameworks. They also have option to integrate Selenium while using any framework of their choice. The developers can combine the features of other frameworks with Selenium to make the web application deliver richer and flawless user experience.

Smooth Integration with Your Existing Ecosystem

While switching to a new testing tool, testers have to check its compatibility with their existing ecosystem. Selenium can be integrated with several widely used tools like Hudson and QMetry. Thus, the testers can integrate the testing tools with the existing solutions and suite of tools. The simple and easy integration process further does not require the users to invest additionally in commercial tools.