Selenium Introduction

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a open source automated testing tool for web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is using that Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications.

Selenium is not just a single tool but have a suite of softwares, It has four components.

• Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
• Selenium Remote Control (RC)
• WebDriver
• Selenium Grid

Birth of Selenium Core

Primarily, Selenium was created by Jason Huggins in 2004. , he was working on a web application that required frequent testing. Having realized that the repetitious manual testing of their application was becoming more and more inefficient, he created a JavaScript program that would automatically control the browser’s actions. He named this program as the “JavaScriptTestRunner.”

Birth of Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC)

Testers using Selenium Core had to install the whole application under test and the web server on their own local computers, because have the some restrictions by the same origin policy. So , Paul Hammant, decided to create a server that will act as an HTTP proxy to “trick” the browser into believing that Selenium Core and the web application being tested come from the same domain. This system is known as the Selenium Remote Control .

Birth of Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid was developed by Patrick Lightbody to address the need of minimizing test execution times as much as possible. He initially called the system “Hosted QA.” It was capable of capturing browser screenshots during significant stages, and also of sending out Selenium commands to different machines simultaneously.

Birth of Selenium IDE

Selenium IDE, a Firefox extension that can automate the browser through a record-and-playback feature. He came up with this idea to further increase the speed in creating test cases.

Birth of WebDriver:

Simon Stewart created WebDriver , when browsers and web applications were becoming more powerful and more restrictive with JavaScript programs like Selenium Core.

It was the first cross-platform testing framework that could control the browser from the OS level.

Brief Introduction Selenium IDE

Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is the simplest framework in the Selenium suite and is the easiest one to learn. It is a Firefox plugin that you can install as easily as you can with other plugins. However, because of its simplicity, Selenium IDE should only be used as a prototyping tool. If you want to create more advanced test cases, you will need to use either Selenium RC or WebDriver.

Brief Introduction Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC)

Selenium RC was the flagship testing framework of the whole Selenium project for a long time. This is the first automated web testing tool that allowed users to use a programming language they prefer.As of version 2.25.0, RC can support the following programming languages:

• Java
• C#
• PHP
• Python
• Perl
• Ruby

Brief Introduction WebDriver

The WebDriver proves itself to be better than both Selenium IDE and Selenium RC in many aspects. It implements a more modern and stable approach in automating the browser’s actions. WebDriver, unlike Selenium RC, does not rely on JavaScript for automation. It controls the browser by directly communicating to it.

The supported languages are the same as those in Selenium RC.

• Java
• C#
• PHP
• Python
• Perl
• Ruby

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid is a tool used together with Selenium RC to run parallel tests across different machines and different browsers all at the same time. Parallel execution means running multiple tests at once.

Features:

• Enables simultaneous running of tests in multiple browsers and environments.
• Saves timeenormously.
• Utilizes the hub-and-nodes concept. The hub acts as a central source of Selenium commands to each node connected to it.