Breaking News! Selenideium Element Inspector is Available Both on testdev.tools and Also on Twitter.
Tags: selenideium, selenide, selenium, chromeextension
Published: 2022-03-09 20:24:29

---
title: Breaking News! Selenideium Element Inspector is Available Both on testdev.tools and Also on Twitter.
published: true
date: 2022-03-09 10:24:21 UTC
tags: selenideium, selenide, selenium, chromeextension
canonical_url: https://mszeles.com/breaking-news-selenideium-element-inspector-is-available-both-on-testdevtools-and-also-on-twitter
---

 **I just got the news** from [**The Testing Kit**](https://twitter.com/TheTestingKit) that **Selenideium Element Inspector with which test automation teams can save hours daily by automatically generating selectors for [Selenide](https://selenide.org/), [Selenium](https://www.selenium.dev/), [Cypress](https://www.cypress.io/), [Playwright](https://playwright.dev/), [Squish](froglogic.com/squish) and [TestCafe](https://testcafe.io/) has been added to the prominent list of** [**Software Testing Tools & Resources**](https://testdev.tools/) **which is a curated library of tools & resources to supercharge your testing.**

A few days ago **I have created the** [**Selenedium Element Inspector Twitter account**](https://twitter.com/selenideium) to have a **platform for its users where they can ask for help share their experiences, request features, and we can also discuss any test automation topics.**

I was happy at the selenideium username was available. And as Grammarly always underlined this word, no I added it to its dictionary. 😊

To celebrate this great news, I have written **a small recap about the short but successful history of the plugin**. Here it is:

## A brief history of Selenideium Element Inspector

### 13rd February 2022 - The first commit

Only a few days after reading an [article about how to create a Chrome Extension in 15 minutes](https://dev.to/mszeles/save-dozens-of-minutes-daily-during-writing-selenide-and-selenium-e2e-automated-tests-using-the-selenideium-element-inspector-4736) I came up with the idea of Selenideium Element Inspector.

Since I read the article, I was thinking about what kind of Chrome plugin could be useful for myself and also for the testing community.

I still remember, it was a Sunday afternoon. I was sitting in my bed, writing an article and then **I suddenly came up with the idea of having a plugin with which I can automate generating the selectors for Selenide, Selenium Java, Selenium Javascript, Selenium Python, Selenium C#, Playwright, Cypress, TestCafe and Squish.**

Ok, I have to admit at the beginning **I defined a Minimum Viable Product(MVP)** to be able to quickly deliver value for the test automation community.

The MVP:

- Log to the console a complete line of copy-pastable selector code on a single click of a web element.
- Add support for CSS Selenide selectors
- Add support for CSS Selenium Java selectors

In the end, I realized the Chrome extension would be much more useful in case I add another type of selectors, so I added the following locators:

- Select by id
- Select by name
- Select by tagName
- Select by linkText
- Select by withText. withText is a Selenide specific selector with which you can find any element based on its text. It is much more powerful than linkText as the latter one only works for links, which I do not really understand why it has such a limit.

**The process is very simple, I create the selector, then use it and in case it locates only one element then I print it on the console.**

**It took only 3 hours (testing included of course) to develop the first version of the Selenideium Element Inspector Chrome extension.**

I have submitted it to the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/selenideium-element-inspe/mgfhljklijclnfeglclagdeoiknnmnda) and I started to pray to be approved.

**I consider contributing to the open-source community very important, which I also did in the last few months by creating frameworks for** [**Selenium - Cucumber**](https://github.com/mszeles/selenium-framework-template), [**Protractor**](https://github.com/mszeles/protractor-javascript-framework), [**Appium**](https://github.com/mszeles/appium-framework), [**RestAssured**](https://github.com/mszeles/rest-assured-practice) and [**Karate DSL**](https://github.com/mszeles/karate-framework) with which you can jumpstart your test automation project and I also started a tutorial on [**Selenide**](https://github.com/mszeles/selenide-tutorial).

You can find the source code of [Selenideium Element Inspector on GitHub](https://github.com/mszeles/selenideium-element-inspector).

### 16th February 2022 - Selenidium Element Inspector has been added to Chrome Web Store

However, I submitted it on Sunday **it only took 3 days to approve my extension**. I was really surprised as it is written that it can take even 30 days to approve your plugin.

During the 3 days, I have already written [Save dozens of minutes daily during writing Selenide and Selenium E2E automated tests using the Selenideium Element Inspector Chrome Extension!](https://dev.to/mszeles/save-dozens-of-minutes-daily-during-writing-selenide-and-selenium-e2e-automated-tests-using-the-selenideium-element-inspector-4736). I was only waiting for the approval. A few minutes after the approval I have published the article and shared it on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/miklos-szeles_save-dozens-of-minutes-daily-during-writing-activity-6899710117429014528-vQ0F), [**Selenide User Group**](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6899710465560444928) **which we created together with [Andrei Solnstev](https://www.linkedin.com/in/asolntsev/)** who is the developer of Selenide, [Test Automation group](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6899711238235123712) and also to Selenium User Group.

**I won't link the latter one as they do not deserve it. I really enjoyed being a member of the group. I have learnt and helped a lot there.**

**I have submitted 2 of my articles** ([Selecting an End to End Testing Framework - Selenium or Selenide?](https://dev.to/mszeles/selecting-an-end-to-end-testing-framework-selenium-or-selenide-13fh-temp-slug-2681874), [Selenide, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship](https://dev.to/mszeles/selenide-i-think-this-is-the-beginning-of-a-beautiful-friendship-530m)) about Selenide which is built on top of Selenium WebDriver and it is superior to Selenium as it has the same feature set and much more: easier syntax, advanced selectors, built-in profiler, no more StaleElementReferenceException and much more.

It took a few days to realize **my posts has been deleted** without any notification about it. I have contacted **Mike Veinder** one of the admins of the group and **asked him why** he deleted my posts.

**He said it was not him, but most probably because it was a self-promo.**

I was standing there stunned. **I wrote an article about a framework from which all the Selenium community could benefit- and the post was labelled as self-promo. I couldn't find words.**

**Whenever I released the plugin I wrote the post about it** ([Save dozens of minutes daily during writing Selenide and Selenium E2E automated tests using the Selenideium Element Inspector Chrome Extension!](https://dev.to/mszeles/save-dozens-of-minutes-daily-during-writing-selenide-and-selenium-e2e-automated-tests-using-the-selenideium-element-inspector-4736)) I also **posted in the Selenium User Group.**

**I was sure this time it won't be deleted, as it is not about Selenide but Selenium and as it is very useful for the test automation community.**

**Well, my post was deleted. I again contacted Mike Veinder and again I got the answer: self-promo. So sharing your knowledge counts as a self-promo. What a useful and logical rule.** 😊

**He was so nice he reposted my article** , which got some attention there.

**A few days later Mike Veinder posted about an upcoming event called The Future Of Testing Frameworks.** I was so excited about the event I decided to participate.

I **took notes during the presentations so I could create my own subjective report.** So this is how [The Future Of Testing Frameworks - A report by Miki Szeles](https://dev.to/mszeles/the-future-of-testing-frameworks-a-report-by-miki-szeles-28nj).

**As it was Mike Veinder who posted about the event, I thought he will be happy about having a post about it.**

**I was totally wrong. He deleted my post and banned me from the group. He said this group is not for me. He was partially true. Despite the great community I do not really want to be a member of a group with such admins as Mike Veinder.**

**I was shocked, so I contacted him. I kindly asked whether I can rejoin the group in case I won't post any more articles, as I wanted to learn and help the community.**

**The answer was blocking me on LinkedIn.**

**True story.** 😱

As **I usually try to learn something even from bad happenings, I looked for other relevant groups** and this is how I found [**Selenium Automation Testers**](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4887515/) and [**Selenium Testing**](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2102114/). **In comparison to the Selenium User Group, they really would like to help the community with all available resources and they are not envious of anything which is not pure Selenium.**

Sorry for this venting, but I really wanted to let the steam go from myself. 😊

Right after I published my post in Test Automation LinkedIn group **I found out there is a very similar plugin** , about which I wrote an article: [SelectorsHub - an awesome XPath and CSS Plugin](https://dev.to/mszeles/selectorshub-an-awesome-xpath-and-css-plugin-4onj).

In case you are curious about **which plugin you should use** let me quickly help you: **Both.** 😊

Despite b **eing very similar both have a different goal, in case you are interested in the whys, just read the article.**

### 21st February 2022 - Selenideium Element Inspector 1.2 has been released

**One week after the first release I already came up with the next version as I wanted to provide more value to the community.**

Here is the list of the improvements:

- Relative XPath Selector
- CSS selectors based on any unique attribute are automatically generated for the web elements (except id, name, class as they are covered a different way).
- In case one of the classes of the element is unique, CSS selector is also generated based on that
- Automatically add ";" to the end of the selector, so you really only have to copy-paste the code.
- Marking the start and end of the logs belonging to Selenideium Element Inspector

I think it is quite a nice and useful feature list.

I have [**committed the last change**](https://github.com/mszeles/selenideium-element-inspector/issues/8) on 18th February and it has been approved on 21st of February 2022 whenever I immediately **posted my article** about it: [Selenideium Element Inspector v1.2 has been released](https://dev.to/mszeles/selenideium-element-inspector-v12-has-been-released-3h5). 😊

### 3rd March 2022 - Selenideium Element Inspector v2.0 has been released with the additional support of Selenium Javascript, Selenium Python, Selenium C#, Cypress, Playwright, TestCafe and Squish testing frameworks

I am a smoker and also a very friendly guy, so during my 3 months of probation period, I had the opportunity to have a few words with almost all the smokers. 😊

**I quickly realized there are a lot of test automation engineers in the company. After some discussion, I found out they are using Squish and TestCafe.**** The next step was obvious: add support for Squish and TestCafe.** 😊

As it is very easy and straightforward to add a new framework to the plugin **I decided to support all the other major testing frameworks Cypress and Playwright (Appium is still on my to-do list).**

So **I published the article** [Selenium JavaScript Python C#, Cypress, TestCafe, Playwright, Squish selector generation has been added to Selenideium Element Inspector v2.0](https://dev.to/mszeles/selenium-javascript-python-c-cypress-testcafe-playwright-squish-selector-generation-has-been-added-to-selenideium-2n30) and **shared it on all possible social media channels.** 😊

### 3rd March 2022 - The first bug report

It **took only 2 days to** [**receive my first bug report** ,](https://github.com/mszeles/selenideium-element-inspector/issues/22) which is **awesome as it means people are using my plugin, and they took the step to share their feedback.**

The [**TheDevilOfJesters**](https://github.com/TheDevilOfJesters) **took his time to report** I have written Selenium Java 3 times on the options page instead of Selenium Java, Selenium Javascript and Selenium C#. I have immediately answered him, but I still have to take the time to fix it, but **luckily it is not a showstopper bug** as you can easily find out which option means what. 😊

**Jester was so kind he even left me a 5-star review in the Chrome Web Store. I quite it here to make sure I will never forget it:**

> **Installed just this morning, only toyed with it a little so far but can easily see it'll be helpful in a few projects I currently am working on.**** The developer is actively engaged and dedicated to the progress of this extension, replying to my issue a mere hour after I posted it on a weekend. **** Looking forward to seeing how far this extension can go and hoping it's a mainstay of my developer chrome profile since it will hopefully be useful enough to stay installed long term.**

Thanks again Jester. 😊

### 3rd March 2022 - Selenideium Element Inspector 2.0 has been released

**On the very same day, the new version of Selenideium Element Inspector 2.0 has been released with a huge new feature set** :

- Automatically generating complete copy-pastable line of code for the following frameworks:
- Selenium JavaScript support
- Selenium Python support
- Selenium C# support
- Cypress support
- TestCafe support
- Playwright support
- Squish support and of course also for
- Selenide support
- Selenium Java support

- Provide an option to select the testing frameworks for which selectors will be generated

### 9th March 2022 - Selenideium Element Inspector has been listed on testdev.tools

And we are here today. **I just got the news a few hours ago via Twitter that** [**Selenideium Element Inspector Chrome Extension has been listed on testdev.tools**](https://testdev.tools/resource/selenideium-element-inspector/).

![SELENI~1.PNG](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1646821121250/kDqsuSTSs.PNG)

**testdev.tools is a curated list of more than 250** [**Software Testing Tools & Resources**](https://testdev.tools/) **to supercharge your testing**.

**I am very proud of this achievement.** 😊

Ok, that is the present, but **what about the future?**

## The future of Selenideium Element Inspector

At the moment **I only have 2 elements on my list** :

1. Fix the bug reported by Jester
2. Add Appium support

**All the other depends on you. Any feature request is warmly welcomed.** 😊

**Thanks for reading the brief history of my Chrome plugin. I really appreciate it.**

**You can download the plugin from the** [**Chrome Web Store**](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/selenideium-element-inspe/mgfhljklijclnfeglclagdeoiknnmnda).

[**Follow Selenideium Element Inspector on Twitter**](https://twitter.com/selenideium), so **you can get help, share feedback and support feature requests!**

📚 **Join the Selenide community** on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9154550/)! ✌

P.S.: **Support the test automation community by sharing this article.** 👍

In case you do **not want to miss my posts** , just **follow me** [here on Hashnode](https://mszeles.com/), on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/miklos-szeles/), on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mszeles) on [Medium.com](https://medium.com/@mszeles), on [dev.to](https://dev.to/mszeles) and even on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/szelesmiki/). 😊

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