Introduction to Selenium

What is Selenium Tool?

Selenium is a free (open-source) automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is quite similar to HP Quick Test Pro (QTP) / HP Unified Functional Test (UFT) only that Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications.

Selenium is not just a single tool; Selenium is a suite of software's, each component has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Click here to know more about Selenium birth picture & Selenium components.

What are the features of selenium automation tool?

Ø Selenium is Free and open-source tool.
Ø Automation of AJAX/CSS applications is easy.
Ø Good cross browser testing tool.
Ø Contains record and playback ( Selenium-IDE) facility.
Ø Best for GUI-intelligent field selection (uses IDs, names, or X-Paths as needed).
Ø Auto-complete feature available in IDE for all common commands.
Ø User-friendly features for debugging and setting breakpoints.
Ø Supports multiple programming languages; can save tests as HTML, Ruby scripts etc…
Ø Support for Selenium user-extension .js files for explicitly looping add-ons.
Ø Option to automatically assert the title of every page.
Ø Mimics actual user experience.
Ø Continuous integration:
- Runs Selenium tests as part of the build.
- Can generate HTML reports and publish them to the entire team.
- Helps catch bugs ASAP.
Ø Large user community.

What are the main difference between selenium and other automation tools currently available in market?

What are the different components of Selenium suite?

Selenium is not just a single tool; Selenium is a suite of software's, each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. Selenium suit has four components:-
Ø Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Ø Selenium Remote Control (RC)
Ø Selenium Web-Driver
Ø Selenium Grid

Note-1 : Selenium RC and Selenium Web-Driver are merged into a single framework to form Selenium 2.
Note-2 : Selenium RC is referred as Selenium 1.

What is Selenium-IDE?

Selenium Integrated-Development Environment (IDE) is one of the simplest framework in the Selenium suite and very easy to get start in automation. Selenium IDE is a Firefox plug-in that you can quickly install and work with. However, because of its simplicity, Selenium IDE should only be used as a prototyping tool. If you want to create more advanced test cases, you will need to use either Selenium RC or Selenium Web-Driver.

What is Selenium Remote Control (RC)?

Selenium RC was the flagship testing framework of the whole Selenium project for a long time. This is the first automated web testing tool that allowed users to use a programming language they prefer.

As of version 2.25.0, RC can support the following programming languages: Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl & Ruby

What is Selenium Web-Driver?

The Web-Driver dominates other selenium tools like Selenium IDE and Selenium RC in many aspects and because of it stable approach in automating the browser actions. Web-Driver does not depend on Java-Script for automation like Selenium-RC. It controls the web browser elements by directly communicating.

The supported languages are the same as those in Selenium RC: Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl and Ruby.

What is Selenium Grid?

Selenium Grid is a tool used together with Selenium RC to run parallel tests across different machines and different browsers all at the same time. Parallel execution means running multiple tests at once.

Features:
Ø Parallel test execution
Ø Supports multiple browsers and environments simultaneously
Ø Saves time enormously
Ø Utilizes the hub-and-nodes concept
[ The hub acts as a central source of Selenium commands to each node connected to it ]