During the time when testing was performed manually, Mercury did something unusual. It broke the trend of manually running the test cases and for the first time introduced Winrunner, an automation testing tool. It’s been 15 years since then, and many automation testing tools such as Selenium came into existence. So, what is so special about Selenium that it has garnered such attention? Which is the latest automation testing tool? Let’s take a deep dive and check what’s happening in the world of automation testing. To learn Selenium online, we recommend our world-class Selenium program at H2K Infosys.
What is Selenium Testing?
Selenium is not a single automation testing tool. It is an entire suite of software that complements each other to test different processes in businesses. Introduced in 2004 by Jason Huggins of ThoughtWorks, now referred to as Selenium Core is the first entity of Selenium.
The Selenium name itself is a product of a then-popular joke. It is named after the Selenium compound which drives the harmful mercury out of the body, referring to Mercury’s Quick Test Professional (QTP) automation testing tool.
At present, Selenium has fours tools in the Selenium Suite
- Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Selenium Remote Control (RC)
- WebDriver
- Selenium Grid
Selenium RC integrates with WebDriver to be referred to as Selenium 2. Now Selenium 4 is the latest version introduced in April 2019.
Why Selenium caught up in the testing ecosystem?
What makes Selenium outstanding is its support for a multitude of programming languages. It can use Java, Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and a few more to write Selenium test scripts. The best part of Selenium is that it is free and open-source. This translates to major cost-cutting benefits to the companies. Coupled with it, the Selenium is portable and can be used for web application testing across browsers and operating systems.
Each component of the Selenium suite has a specific role to play while testing web applications and browsers.
Selenium IDE – It is a plugin that has the record/run feature. It essentially provides the tester a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to record the interactions with the website. What’s more, the GUI allows the tester to create test cases and edit them. No programming language knowledge is required to work on this IDE.
Selenium RC – It is a standalone automation testing framework in Java with support for numerous programming languages in its GUI. It has two important parts-
- Different libraries for various computer languages.
- It can launch and kill browsers automatically.
WebDriver – The WebDriver is the most powerful component of the entire suite. It makes the browser interaction possible from the operating system level in the absence of a proxy. Each browser has its WebDriver application from which automated testing can be performed.
Selenium Grid – This component makes parallel testing on different browsers possible. Hence, the entire testing process is accelerated. It allows one to run similar test cases on different computer systems, operating systems, and browsers simultaneously.
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Which programming language is better for Selenium Testing?
At large, Selenium once learned using a particular programming language can be 90% of the time applicable to different languages. So, which language is ideal for use for Selenium testing. The obvious answer is, the language you are most comfortable with.
However, it is also dependent on the incumbent computer language being used in the company. For instance, if a business uses Python for all its development, it is ideal to use Python for Selenium testing.
Python and Ruby, due to their easy learning curve are the best options to use with Selenium. That said, every language has something to offer. Java, on the other hand, makes Selenium testing complicated due to its complex syntax. Hence, the choice of the programming language rests with the team’s preference and their goal.
Is Selenium the latest automation testing course?
Out of the top 10 automation testing tools of 2020, Katalon Studio’s release dates back to 2015 with its stable version released in 2019.
With Selenium 4 version was introduced on 24th April 2019, Selenium is yet the most powerful among all in the automation testing ecosystem though not the latest.
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