Selenium

The portable open-source automated software testing tool- Selenium excels as tool for testing web apps. Selenium works across browsers and OS platforms. It should be noted that Selenium is not a single tool but a set of tools that works to automate and enhance the effectiveness of the process of testing web app.

Notable Testing Features:

  • It is an open-source and portable framework
  • Selenium testing lets you record and playback and author tests for web apps. You don’t need to know any scripting languages to test using the Selenium IDE
  • It’s could-based, and testers can record their actions and save them as reusable scripts that you can understand and use easily
  • It supports most of the major browsers, Oss, and programming languages
  • You can execute tests parallelly and cut down test times and enhance their efficiency
  • It supports integration with source code compilation frameworks like Maven and Ant
  • You can integrate it with popular testing frameworks for testing apps and creating reports
  • It is less resource-intensive than its competitors
  • Selenium is integrated with the WebDriver API
  • You don’t need server-side apps and a browser is all you need to test
  • You can categorize Selenium commands in several understandable and implementable classes
  • The Selenium 2.0 combines Selenium RC (Remote Control) and WebDriver API which supports Ajax

Testing Tools / Architecture

As we mentioned Selenium is a toolset rather than a single tool. It consists of the following components or tools:

Selenium IDE

Selenium RC

Selenium WebDriver

Selenium Grid

Top Selenium Automation Testing use cases / Testing types

  • When you need automated testing solutions
  • It comes with critical benefits throughout the web app testing process
  • It reduces HR load for the testing process

Type of testing you can do using Selenium

Selenium can perform many tests or rather types of tests. Such selenium testing test types include:

Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is usually carried out by professional testers or quality assurance specialists. The aim of the test is to ensure that the web app has high-performance and are the app is tested on several benchmarks for combinations of OS and browser.

Performance Testing

This is another series of tests performed by professionals that seeks to ensure that projects stand by performance benchmarks as laid out by the different stakeholders.

End-to-end Testing

This type of test too is carried out by professional specialists, and it considers the whole web app from a user’s perspective. The goal of the test is to ensure that all the web app’s touchpoints work as intended.

Integration Testing

Developers perform this test to make certain that all the code is divided into separate modules or units that can function on their own besides working coordinated with each other.

System Testing

System testing is also referred to as black box testing and professionals carry it out without any relationship to any other test or code part. It usually works around the workflow of individual users.

Regression Testing

The is a combination of several tests that ensure that new features added to a particular web app work seamlessly with existing systems.

While human evaluation is sometimes indispensable for certain aspects of a web app, selenium testing works like a charm for testing issues that can indeed be done automatically.

Versions Timeline:

Since its start way back in 2004, Selenium has a rich and chequered history. Let’s take a look at the timeline for the overall projects.

  • 2004

    Jason Huggins from ThoughtWorks needed to test the front-end behavior of his web app from different browsers. So, he created a software tool that injects JS code that works under the webpage, eventually enabling front-end user interaction automation. This tool came to be known as the JS-based TestRunner tool. The popularity of the tool made led the developer to shift to an open-source licensing and use model to help further work and development. By the end of the year the developers also developed a server part coded in Java.
    The original client-side TestRunner also got ported to the Ruby framework. This came to be known as Selenium B or Driven Selenium in the evolution of the tool.

  • 2005

    Nelson Sproul and Dan Fabulich from Bea developed the driver coder further eventually creating a standalone server bundled with MortBay’s Jetty functioning as the HTTP proxy of the system. This was referred to as Selenium 1.0 or Selenium RC (Remote Control).

  • 2006

    In 2006 Shinya Kasatani wrapped the code for the Selenium driver as a Firefox browser IDE module. This is referred to as the Selenium IDE.

  • 2007

    In 2007 Simon Stewart from ThoughtWorks created separate client drivers for all major browsers which made them all support testing automation on the same scale with native browsers. This became the Selenium 2.0 or popularly the Selenium WebDriver project.

  • 2008

    Again in 2008 Philippe Hanrigou from ThoughtWorks develops the project further by creating a server letting testers access and run tests on browsers from any number of remote devices. The community referred to this as the Selenium Grid.

  • 2016

    Selenium RC eventually got deprecated and paved the way for the WebDriver to become a part of the standard Selenium implementation. This is known as Selenium 3.0.

  • 2019

    In 2019 WebDriver became a standard part of W3C protocol

  • 2021

    October 13th of 2021 saw the release of the latest version of the software tool- v 4.0

Selenium QA Expertise

iSummation’s Software QA team professionals help you make sure your apps work right in line with your intention. Selenium and iSummation provides greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness for your app testing procedure!

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