To the uninitiated, browser testing sounds simple enough. It would be imagined as the process of manually navigating through various browsers as they run your development code whether remotely or locally.
It enables you to visually examine that the application is working as you planned them to be from a design and functionality perspective. Testing this way can be a swift method to approve that code.
Still, it is not a testing method that comprehensively covers the full magnitude of your website’s codebase on the different types of browsers accessible to your clients.
The planning and process need to center around the tool optimization and accomplishing the greatest test coverage.
This is where automated testing truly makes its mark.
Initiated by the Selenium venture, automated web browser testing is a set of tools to develop, maintain and run the test against browsers along various platforms.
Why Selenium?
Many would propose credits to the ‘free’ aspect in the whole Selenium Test Automation arrangement, yet the advantages are further past the undeniable cost factors.
Other factors are:
- The key hit factor for using Selenium is that the tests can be coded in different browsing languages, where they can be directly performed over different various internet browsers comprising of Google Chrome, Firefox Browser, Edge Browser (Windows 10), Internet Explorer, and Safari. Selenium WebDriver offers a centralized interface for these browsers; so you have to write the browser tests only once.
- Additionally, the codes can easily be performed on various operating systems such as Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux.
- Its versatility in having the capability of performing tests in parallel on several browsers further saves a lot of time.
- Selenium is viewed as the most dynamic tool, as its features are easy to utilize, offer simple UIs that empower to meet 90% of the necessities of web application tests.
- Developed with Java, Selenium is adaptable as it also meshes into various programming languages, for example, Ruby, .NET, PHP, Perl, and gives the alternative of utilizing a wide array of IDEs as per the choice of tester’s programming language.
- Selenium is a library that includes properties, processes, and interfaces, which can be combined with multiple programming languages as mentioned above.
- By using Selenium, anything we view on a web page or application can be automated, such as a prompt message, alert message, message box, text box, checkbox, hyperlink, drop-down buttons (single-click, double-click), radio button, and much more. We can also automate apps built utilizing KendoUI or Ext.js (Sencha applications).
- It can additionally be seen as a core technology in other automation APIs, tools, and frameworks.
- Another great power of Selenium is that it’s completely open source, and is worthy to be integrated with about anything to give a sturdy test system, like TestNG to drive tests, Ant or Maven for automating builds, Hudson or Jenkins or Cruise Control for continuous integration.
- It likewise possesses a very active community, which affirms that there is an abundance of advice and guidance available.
Thus, such a considerable amount of advantages bound the enterprises to consider Selenium as the impeccable tool for the automated browser testing.