Understanding Selenium Test Automation Tool

Selenium is one of the most popular open-source automated testing tool available nowadays. It automates web applications for testing purposes but is certainly not limited to just that. Selenium is not just a single tool, instead, it is a set of different tools each with a different approach to support test automation. These tools when used together provide many options for locating the UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behaviour. The following are the four tools that comprise Selenium's Tool Suite:

• Selenium IDE
• Selenium RC
• Selenium WebDriver
• Selenium Grid

• Selenium is an open source tool.
• Unlike proprietary tools, it's available free of cost.
• This is the best tool available in the market for web application testing.
• One of the Selenium's key features is the support for executing one's tests on multiple browser platforms like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari etc.
• Selenium allows to control a browser from any one of these Six languages to write automation scripts -> Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl, and PHP.
• Selenium is available for Operating Systems such as Windows, Linux and Mac.
• Selenium can be used for Functional, Compatibility, Regression, and User Acceptance Testing. However, in the industry, it is mainly used for Regression Testing.

• Selenium is a browser-based testing tool. It can’t be used for automating desktop applications and mobile applications. (i.e. It can be used only for automating web-based applications)

The following are the list of supported browsers on which Selenium Automation scripts can be executed:

• Chrome Browser
• Firefox Browser
• Internet Explorer Browser
• Safari Browser
• Opera Browser

The following are the list of supported Operating System environments on which Selenium Automation scripts can be executed:

• Microsoft Windows OS
• Apple OS X
• Linux OS

The following are the list of programming languages using which the Selenium Automation scripts can be developed:

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

• Selenium 1 (Oldest version)
  • Selenium IDE + Selenium RC + Selenium Grid
• Selenium 2
  • Selenium IDE + Selenium RC + Selenium WebDriver + Selenium Grid
• Selenium 3
  • The latest version of Selenium.
  • Selenium IDE + Selenium WebDriver Latest + Selenium Grid
• Selenium 4
  • Selenium has put out its alpha versions of Selenium 4. Still, there is no official announcement yet about its release date.