Why Is Selenium One Of The Best Automated Testing Tools?

In the Agile and DevOps driven software application development process, automated testing has undoubtedly shortened the time to delivery and reduced costs. However, automated testing requires the right selection of automation testing tools. Among the available tools, Selenium is placed right at the top of the technology stack. It is widely used to test web applications.

Why Selenium?

As an open-source testing framework, Selenium supports cross-browser testing of web applications and ensures the product to be market ready. Leveraged both by developers and testers, Selenium testing can be carried out by QA professionals without having a thorough knowledge of the scripting language. Migrating to Selenium testing services can give business outcomes like reduced testing effort, cost effectiveness, speed, platform compatibility, and much more. It has a default test language called ‘Selenese’, which can be used to write test scripts automatically. Moreover, the Selenium test suite comprises several tools such as WebDriver, Remote Control, IDE, and Grid, with each having a distinct functionality.

Selenium offers a slew of benefits over other automation tools. It allows Selenium experts to write test scripts in a particular programming language and use/reuse them across browsers. In fact, Selenium WebDriver has become a standard for browsers. Selenium testing entails testing user interfaces and comparing test results to validate whether they are in accordance with the expected outcomes or not. Its SENDKEYS method translates test scripts written in any language into the one understood by it.

Benefits businesses accrue through Selenium testing

1. Reduces cost: The Selenium tool is open-source and can be easily downloaded from its official site. It comes with a strong community-based development support.
2. Compatibility with browsers: Selenium can be leveraged to test any web application on multiple browsers like Chrome, Edge, IE, Firefox, Yandex, and Safari. The tool enables Selenium testing specialists to check that the web application works seamlessly on multiple browsers. Besides, by changing the scripting language, the tool can be customized to the exact testing requirements of a software application. Furthermore, Selenium WebDriver offers automated solution to the Selenium experts when they try cross-browser testing of any web application.
3. Testing across devices: Since web applications need to be responsive across device platforms for delivering a greater UX, they need to be tested on multiple devices. Selenium testing specialists can write automated test cases for iPhones, Android, Windows, and Blackberry, among others.
4. Speeds up time to delivery: Selenium allows testers to write platform-compatible test scripts, thus leaving them from writing separate scripts for each platform. This saves them from performing regression testing and quickens the time to delivery.
5. Allows CI and CD: The success of DevOps methodology depends on a seamless run of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery outcomes. Thus, by automating the test process, Selenium helps businesses to implement DevOps successfully.
6. Shortens turnarounds: An effective Selenium testing strategy helps QA teams to run multiple automated test cases across browsers or OS platforms in parallel. This, besides enhancing the quality of web applications, reduces the turnaround time to a great extent.
7. Compatible with frameworks and languages: Selenium tool can be easily integrated with a host of frameworks namely, Jenkins, TestNG, ANT, Maven, etc to compile the source code. In fact, its integration with Jenkins can enable CI and CD seamlessly.
8. Community support: The community-based support for Selenium ensures regular updates and upgrades. The support makes sure the tool remains glitch-free and meets the exacting testing standards and industry trends.
9. Simulation of keyboard and mouse cursor: Selenium allows you to simulate and automate several scenarios like keypress, mouse drag and drop, multiple item selection, etc. Such mimicking of real-life scenarios can facilitate QA testing and reduce turnarounds.
10. No specific training required: One of the main reasons for the adoption of Selenium is its short learning curve. The QA teams do not require prior knowledge of a particular language, for the tool supports a slew of programming languages. Just write the test script in a programming language you know and let the same be translated into a Selenium-understandable format. So, while using the tool, Selenium experts do not need to learn any new programming language, thus saving considerable time and effort.

Conclusion

Automated testing tools have become critical in ensuring the flawless delivery of software applications. Among many such tools, Selenium comes with myriad benefits that help businesses to automate QA testing and enhance the quality and delivery of web applications.

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, Global Leaders in Independent Quality Engineering & Software Testing Services to be appraised at CMMI-SVC v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also ISO 9001:2015 & ISO 27001:2013 certified.