Automation Testing frameworks allow testers to simplify test development and execution processes. It typically provides an environment for the execution of tests and for producing consistent output.
These tools are designed to aid you in your daily test automation tasks. It doesn’t matter if it’s testing software that records actions or a web-based test tool. It’s here to take all the tedious work of writing test scripts, leaving the tester with time for quality tests.
Test Automation is a tried, tested, cost-effective method of improving software development. So, selecting the right test automation software can be essential to the testing results and QA timelines.
As per the State of Open Source Survey, almost 37% of organizations now incorporate automated testing into their Continuous Integration, and the Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) process allows developers to immediately know whether the most recent code changes have affected any aspect of the software after it’s released to production.
With the growing need for automated testing platforms, there’s no reason to be surprised that many are readily available. Among all, today we will be discussing the Selenium framework and how it proves to be the best automation testing framework, even though there have been many new frameworks in the market in the past few years.
All You Should Know About Selenium
Selenium is a well-known, open-source test automation framework that does not require an introduction. Selenium is now a household name after 16 years of existence. Automation testers often assume that they already know what Selenium Grid is.
Due to people and organizations joining this project quickly, Selenium quickly grew into four of its components in just four years, i.e.,
a) Selenium IDE (for Selenium test development)
b) Selenium RC (Remote Control)
c) Selenium WebDriver
d) Selenium Grid
Selenium now has even more incredible and innovative features with the release of Selenium 4.0.
The relative locators have been added to Selenium 4.0. They are relative to the element, not absolute. The old implementation was fragile and couldn’t work with dynamic content. This new implementation is much more robust. This release is a significant milestone for NetworkInterceptor, and a big step towards realizing NetworkInterceptor’s dream of complete browser automation.
Some of the Features You Must Know About Selenium
i) Selenium Portable: It is the best portable test automation framework for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It can also be used with Firefox, Android, and Solaris.
ii) Record and Replay: Selenium offers record and replay features that allow automation testing without having to learn the programming languages.
iii) Large Language Support: Selenium offers extensive programming language support, with all major programming languages under its umbrella.
iv) Selenium WebDriver Support: Selenium can support the WebDriver API, which efficiently allows cross-browser testing of a web app.
All About Selenium Test Automation Framework
The WebDriver technology that drives a browser is the core technology of the Selenium project. WebDriver comprises two components: the “client” code library that allows programmers to access web pages and the “browser-driver” technology that opens Firefox, Edge, and Chrome. Programmers can also create test cases, run in an IDE, or as part of another program.
Selenium Frameworks store the test cases in a hierarchy, such as a folder or class tree in programming languages. They also synchronize the running and interact with the grid to run them. It is easy to change the framework’s configuration to switch out the grid is easy. This allows you to choose the browsers, run the tests, integrate with visual testing, and so forth.
Some frameworks were designed from the start to integrate with Selenium. Others had it added later. Using a framework that supports Selenium is best if your team already uses it. It allows the team to add web browser automation while keeping all tests in one place.
The choice in a framework leads to the question: Is Selenium an appropriate automation tool?
Why Should You Consider Selenium For Automation Testing?
WebDriver sends commands via a protocol that is a World Wide Web Consortium standard. All major browser vendors, including Apple, Google, and Mozilla support this standard. This means that a program can be used to test Chrome and to change one setting from the browser.
Developers write code to create tests in any programming language. It means testers can develop tests in the same programming language used for production code or write their tests. This tool is also the most widely used, so getting support, training, and hiring staff will be easy.
The programmers will be more inclined to consider the tests as first-class artifacts if they are written in the same language, as it avoids automation delay.
Selenium was originally developed to automate functional test automation for web applications. Selenium can run hundreds of different browsers, operating systems, and screen combinations in the cloud. This makes it ideal for compatibility testing with tools like LambdaTest Selenium Testing.
LambdaTest is a browser & app testing cloud to perform both exploratory and automated testing across 3000+ different browsers, real devices, and operating systems.
Wrapping Up!
Selenium is open-source, vendor-agnostic, and has plugins for almost every programming language, development environment, and test framework.
Selenium also offers several frameworks that were created as Selenium-native frameworks. Therefore, Selenium is the widely used automated web browser testing tool.
