Is Selenium Beneficial for Web App Automation?
Tags: Selenium, Web Automation, Test Automation, Software Testing, Selenium Webdriver

Selenium, an open-source automation testing tool widely used for web-based applications is gaining momentum in today’s testing market. This automation tool has a lot of distinctive benefits that gives the companies using selenium an edge over the competition. In this blog, watch out why it is the most preferred choice of organizations and automation testers.

What is Selenium?

As mentioned earlier, Selenium is a pool of tools that allows a testing team to automate testing (mainly functional). This is inclusive of Selenium Web Driver, which binds and pushes the browser for testing, the Selenium IDE, where you can create scripts plus record and playback interactions from the browser and the Selenium Grid easily, and one can test cross multiple machines and configurations once for all, a step ahead from manual testing. Selenium is a step up from this process.

Selenium is an open-source that supports a wide range of languages like Python, Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, and also works across operating systems and browsers. It supports parallel testing as well as TestNG, JUnit and NUnit frameworks.

The main idea behind the success of Selenium is that the tests can be programmed in “n” number of programming languages and they can run directly in all web browsers and work across operating systems.

Another reason why the popularity of selenium amongst any global test automation company has increased is that it’s one of the most powerful automation tools yet so simple to use. Its easy user interface helps the testers by meeting 90% of web application testing needs.

The Seven Basic Steps of Selenium Tests:

Making a WebDriver instance

Navigating to a Web page

Locate an HTML element on the Web page

Execute an action on an HTML element

Predict the browser response in regards to the action

Run tests and record all the relevant test results using a test framework

Finalize and conclude the test

Here Are Some of The Major Benefits That Selenium Brings for Website Testing Services:

Transparency: Selenium ensures agility and transparency between the cross-functional teams involved in the software development process (developers, QA, operations, clients and the management). Independent Platform: Helps the software testers in avoiding the need to write the test scripts for each platform that is to be tested as it follows the principle of writing one test script and can run on any platform. Quickens TTM and TTD: Selenium helps avoid testers to write a test script for each platform, helping them in saving time and avoid the regression testing process, optimizing testing time and quickens TTM & TTD. Fosters Continuous Integration Efforts: Continuous Integration and continuous delivery (CI & CD) are the modern agile enablers of the SDLC process. Selenium by automating the overall test process acts as a catalyst to the nurtures of the efforts of the companies in the successful implementation of the CI process. Visibility in End-to-End Testing: In the case of end-to-end web applications testing selenium offers great visibility. Reduces Turnaround Time: Its framework helps the testing teams in facilitating the testing teams to automatically run the multiple test cases parallel to the multi-browser platforms, reducing the turnaround time by ensuring enhanced testing quality.

The main purpose of automating testing partner is not to give away the manual testing 100%, but to minimize the test cases counts that run manually. Automation Testing allows them to test multilingual websites at the same time by increasing the test execution speed.

Best Practices for Selenium Automation Testing

1. Choose Early Testing

One of the automation testing practices that can bring out the best of selenium testing services is to execute early testing and repetitive testing. By putting selenium testing attributes from phase 1 of SDLC helps a great deal. By starting early, the development team and the testers can be sure of the application’s quality and the way it responds to the requirements of the end-users. The benefit of this approach is that the test results can be provided to the developers right on time before the work is completed. It will save a lot of cost and time in the later run.

2. Dividing the Tasks

Assigning tasks are one important practice that the team can avail of in selenium testing. You can assign tasks based on the different skill levels of the team members involved in the testing, divide the test suites and test cases separately.

3. Use of BDD Framework

While looking at the best practices of selenium automation testing, Behavior Driven Development is one of the most utilized development steps for Selenium Testing practices that helps the testers to prepare automation cases easily.

4. Set up Test Reports

The improvement in the application is only possible when the team keeps the track of what is going in the testing process. The team needs to ensure that they track every progress of selenium testing that results in value addition and productivity.

5. Automation Prior Test Designs

To create the test cases, the team needs to keep in mind that before they need to set up the Selenium Test Automation. Sending the application directly into the Automation testing with selenium can result negatively. For the complete success of Selenium Testing, prior planning and strategy building is essential.

6. Seek Quick Feedback

When put up in a short release cycle, it will directly give it easier and quicker market time for more feedbacks. One can get continuous feedback from the functional experts, testers and stakeholders which ensures spotting and clarifying errors on high priority.

7. Test Identification

The team always needs to keep an eye on the goals as a tester and decide on which test case to automate first. They can always go with testing the cases that include colours, layouts, and fonts first.

8. Choosing the Right Tools

There are so many selenium tools available for the quality testing process, but the team needs to be precise about which one is essential for them by considering the needs and requirements of the clients along with the compatibility of the tool with the software.

9. Not Fully Automating the Tests in Regards to Unstable Elements

Organizations might want to change a few elements of the web application with time. In that case, it’s better not to automate the tests cases for unstable elements as if you are testing on those unstable elements that are more likely to get changed over time, you might need to test them over and over again.

Need help with Selenium Testing?

Web applications require thorough testing before release which includes using smart tech products like Selenium, as it takes more than just coders coding the software. Without experience in the testing strategies and methods that your product requires, the software might just turn into a cold project in just a matter of time!

Happy Testing :)