Whenever we talk about automation testing, Selenium is always on the top of the list. Being one of the best tools for carrying out automation testing, developers simply love to work upon Selenium and attain the outputs. But you might be wondering that when we are having many other options available, then why only Selenium? Does it have any extra-ordinary features for you? We have answers to all your questions. Let's not waste time and get a quick overview of Selenium.
As per a recent report, the market for test automation valued at 12.91 billion USD in 2015 is expected to skyrocket to 85.84 billion USD by 2024.
What is Selenium?
Before we start discussing the significance of Selenium, it becomes necessary that we know what is Selenium.
Selenium is an open-source software tool mainly used in functional and regression testing. Selenium supports different platforms, OS and multiple browsers. It has a great set of tools for different business needs, tools namely include- Selenium RC, Selenium IDE, Selenium Grid and Selenium WebDriver.
Why is Selenium used?
The foremost reason to use Selenium is to automate the testing across different web browsers. Selenium supports multiple browsers including Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Chrome and IE and users can even automate browser testing across all these browsers. There is a huge number of reasons which will compel us to choose Selenium. Want to know? Keep reading!
Top Benefits of Selenium
1. Language and Framework Support: Selenium supports a wide range of languages like- Java, Python, JavaScript, C#, Ruby, and Perl. It allows users to write their scripts in any of these programming languages and Selenium converts it into compatible codes in a few seconds.
2. Open Source Availability: Being an open-source tool, Selenium comes out to be an easily accessible automation framework that is free of costs. So, users can save a huge capital here and utilize them for other good causes.
3. Multi-Browser Support: The widely used browsers- Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Edge browsers are all compatible with Selenium scripts. So, you need not write the scripts all over again for every browser, just one script will work for all.
4. Support Across Various Operating Systems: Selenium is a highly versatile tool that can work across various operating systems like Windows, Linux, Mac OS, UNIX, etc. according to your comfort. Selenium test suites can be created over any platform and the same test suites can be executed on any other platform. This enables the testers to write automation scripts easily.
5. Ease Of Implementation: Selenium automation frameworks provide a user-friendly interface for the creation and execution of test scripts. It also enables you to watch while the test is running and analyze detailed reports of the tests.
6. Reusability and Integrations: Selenium test suites are reusable and can be tested across various browsers as discussed above. However, selenium is not an all-inclusive web automation tool, therefore, it requires third-party frameworks to expand the scope of testing.
7. Flexibility: Test management plays a very important role in the testing lifecycle. Selenium testing becomes more convenient and easier with features like regrouping and refactoring of test cases. These features enable testers to reduce piracy, change codes and improve the manageability. This feature makes selenium testing a far simpler task.
9. Less Hardware Usage: Selenium requires less hardware as compared to other automation tools like QTP, UFT, SilkTest.
10. Easy to Learn and Use: Writing selenium scripts is not a very difficult and complex task. Documentation on the selenium website is very helpful for the beginners to get started with selenium automation testing. Also, Selenium tutorials, testing, and development support are there on the Google for newcomers to learn. Moreover, the Selenium IDE extension on the Firefox browser enables you to record and play to learn the functionalities of selenium scripts.
11. Constant Updates: Since Selenium is supported by a community so there are regular updates and upgrades by the community. These upgrades are easy to understand and imply saving extra costs.
Conclusion:
In the end, we can conclude that Selenium is one of the most effective and simpler tools present for automation testing that is very easy to access and does not require a particular operating system. The rising demands of the industry require testers to keep themselves upgraded. Selenium being an open-source tool for the automation testing has emerged as the first choice of the developers. When it comes to selecting from a number of options, experts always choose the one with the least complexities. This is what makes Selenium, the first choice of the testers.
