INTRODUCTION TO SELENIUM

 

Developing defect-free software is dream of every development team and so they test their products, but as we all know that software without any bug is a myth. Test Engineers try to grab out as many defects as they can before the software release, despite of best manual testing efforts bugs often reappear. To overcome this to some extent Automation Software Testing was introduced. Automation software testing is best way to increase efficiency, effectiveness and converge of your software and simultaneously decrease the time and efforts taken to test the software manually.

Why selenium?

According to ongoing industrial trend there is a huge demand of professionals who is well equipped with basic testing concepts as well as have hand-on knowledge of automation testing. The bunch of iterative and repetitive scenarios of manual testing increases the demand of automation testing. Automations testing supports execution of repetitive test cases which help in time reduction compare to manual testing. It also helps in parallel execution of test cases in different web browsers and saves time and money. Another important benefit of automation testing is improvement in accuracy and thereby reducing human errors resulting in high ROI and faster go-to market.

Selenium is the best option to as it is open source with huge helping communities. It supports multiple browsers and platforms. Test engineers for whom programming language is a barrier, for them selenium is flexible enough to support multiple language implementation. Selenium is designed in such a way that it uplifts the automation testing of functional aspects of web-based application along with different browser and platform compatibility.

Selenium is an open-source automation testing suit used to test web-based applications across different browsers and platforms. It is licensed under Apache Licence 2.0. It is not just a tool but it is set of different software which server organizations in order to accomplish its different testing needs.

Selenium consists of different components:

· Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

· Selenium Remote Control (RC).

· Selenium WebDriver.

· Selenium Grid.

At present time, Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver merged and form a new frame work known as Selenium 2.

This tutorial will edify you about selenium and its related tools along with their usage and practical examples.

TARGET AUDIENCE

This tutorial is designed for software testing engineer who would like to make Selenium as their profession. Tutorial contains real-time practical examples which help in grasping and learning it quickly.

PREREQUISITES

Before going further, we assume that the reader is familiar with core java programming and have basic knowledge of object oriented concepts. It is good to have fundamental knowledge of testing concepts.

Quick Facts:

Do you know how the name SELENIUM came into existence?

Actually, it was a jest came into mind of Jason Huggins the developer of Selenium. Mercury Interactive was a company whose automation testing framework is more popular during selenium’s development. As Selenium is a chemical which acts as antidote for Mercury poisoning. Jason suggested this name to his teammates and this is how they got the name Selenium which later on concur the market of Mercury Interactive.

What’s next?

In upcoming articles we will introduce you with other trending automation tools and how selenium is better as well as we will have deep and concept level learning of Selenium suit followed by advantages and disadvantages of Selenium.