Selenium is a set of different software tools each with a different approach to supporting test automation. Most Selenium QA Engineers focus on the one or two tools that most meet the needs of their project, however learning all the tools will give you many different options for approaching different test automation problems. The entire suite of tools results in a rich set of testing functions specifically geared to the needs of testing of web applications of all types. These operations are highly flexible, allowing many options for locating UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behavior. One of Selenium’s key features is the support for executing one’s tests on multiple browser platforms.

Many, perhaps most, software applications today are written as web-based applications to be run in an Internet browser. The effectiveness of testing these applications varies widely among companies and organizations. In an era of highly interactive and responsive software processes where many organizations are using some form of Agile methodology, test automation is frequently becoming a requirement for software projects. Test automation is often the answer. Test automation means using a software tool to run repeatable tests against the application to be tested. For regression testing this provides that responsiveness.

There are many advantages to test automation. Most are related to the repeatability of the tests and the speed at which the tests can be executed. There are a number of commercial and open source tools available for assisting with the development of test automation. Selenium is possibly the most widely-used open source solution. This user’s guide will assist both new and experienced Selenium users in learning effective techniques in building test automation for web applications.

Is automation always advantageous? When should one decide to automate test cases?

It is not always advantageous to automate test cases. There are times when manual testing may be more appropriate. For instance, if the application’s user interface will change considerably in the near future, then any automation might need to be rewritten anyway. Also, sometimes there simply is not enough time to build test automation. For the short term, manual testing may be more effective. If an application has a very tight deadline, there is currently no test automation available, and it’s imperative that the testing get done within that time frame, then manual testing is the best solution.

You’ll find that Selenium is highly flexible. There are many ways you can add functionality to both Selenium test scripts and Selenium’s framework to customize your test automation. This is perhaps Selenium’s greatest strength when compared with other automation tools. These customizations are described in various places throughout this document. In addition, since Selenium is Open Source, the sourcecode can always be downloaded and modified.

Selenium-WebDriver supports the following browsers along with the operating systems these browsers are compatible with.

• Google Chrome
• Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 on appropriate combinations of Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1. As of April 15 2014, IE 6 is no longer supported. The driver supports running 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the browser where applicable
• Firefox: latest ESR, previous ESR, current release, one previous release
• Safari
• Opera
• HtmlUnit
• phantomjs
• Android (with Selendroid or appium)
• iOS (with ios-driver or appium)