The agile process adaptation in the software development process quickens the overall software development time, time-to-delivery (TTD), time-to-market (TTM) and ultimately lowering developmental costs. To ensure quality and efficiency in the testing process, the demand for automation testing tools has increased dramatically. Of the many automation testing tools available, Selenium is one of the most widely used to test web applications.

What is Selenium Automation Tool?

Selenium is the portable open source web application testing framework. The Selenium framework utilizes a default test domain language as “Selenese” for writing test scripts, it also supports the testers in writing the test scripts. This framework consists of a varied stack of software test automation tools, each having different functionality that is application or project specific. Selenium test suite consists of following:

• Selenium WebDriver
• Selenium RC or Remote Control
• Selenium IDE
• Selenium-Grid

Platforms and Browsers supported by Selenium

As specified in the Selenium official sources guide, here is the list of the platforms and browsers supported by Selenium:

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

Why choose Selenium Over Other Automation Testing Tools?

The Global Test Automation market will rise at a solid 15.4 percent CAGR between 2017 and 2025 to be worth US$ 109.69 bn by 2025 from US$ 30.45 bn in 2016."

- A report by Transparency Market Research

Selenium encourages testers  to write a script to write a script in one programming language and run (re-use) same test scripts on multiple browser platforms. WebDriver is becoming part of the W3C standard for all browsers, and thus developing browsers which will automatically support Selenium. The interesting aspect of this test automation tool is it leverages testers in testing user interface modules, offers a large set of options to test, compare the results and finally check if they are in accordance to the expected application behavior or not. The selenium's "SENDKEYS" method translates test scripts written in various languages into the Selenium understandable way.

While there are many benefits Selenium offers, here are some of the major benefits that Selenium brings:

• Transparency: Ensures agility and transparency across the cross-functional teams of SDLC process (developers, quality assurance, operations, clients and the management).

• Platform Independent: Avoids the software tester’s time in writing test scripts for each platform to be tested. As it follows the principle of writing one test script and runs on any platform.

• Quickens TTM and TTD: In the case of manual testing, the testing is very painful and uncertain process because of which the product delivery and time to market schedules are missed. This increases the cost of overall project. However, Selenium avoids testers to write test script for each platform. This in turn saves the time and also avoids regression testing process. This optimizes testing time and quickens the TTM and TTD.  

• Fosters Continuous Integration Efforts: Continuous Integration and continuous delivery are the modern agile-enablers of the software development process. Selenium by automating the overall test process can act as a catalyst to the nurtures the efforts of organizations to in successful implementation of Continuous Integration (CI) practice. (Learn how CI can save the QA efforts here)

• Visibility in End-to-End Testing: In  case of end-to-end applications testing selenium offers great visibility.

• Reduces Turnaround Time: Selenium framework facilitates the testing teams to automatically run the multiple test cases parallelly on multi-browser platforms. This reduces the turnaround time by ensuring extreme testing quality.

• Integration With Other Tools: Selenium with Java is famous as rest of the available jars like ExtentReports, Sikuli, Appium, and so on. Selenium tool provides flexibility for testers to get integrated with these jars to extend its functionalities to new frontiers:

1. Selenium integration with "ExtentReports" can generate graphs and reports, which can be used to provide deeper insights on testing status to the clients.

2. Integrating Selenium with "Sikuli"can test web applications involving videos and Images.

3. Testing of web apps on Android or iOS platforms can achieved by integrating Selenium with Appium.

Conclusion

Choosing the right automation test tool is the key to a successful enterprise. So, if you are looking out for help or confused on what suits you the best? Get in touch with our V-Soft’s Independent Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) for free experts consulting.

About The Author

SriRam has a proven record in setting up multiple Testing Centers of Excellence (TCoE) for customers across North America, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. He has traveled to Canada, and the West Indies to support his clients, as well as working in India. He currently resides and works in V-Soft's headquarters in Louisville, KY. He spent the last 17 years in the IT Services industry with large multi-national organizations. SriRam’s work experience ranges from small startups to large, multi-billion dollar organizations.  SriRam’s help in building and heading the QA Practice at V-Soft has allowed them to deliver better value add solutions to customers. He also helped position V-Soft as a market leader in the Independent QA CoE industry with proven, innovative in-house capabilities through strengthening their existing core processes in the QA space.