Introduction on Selenium Tool

Selenium is a free (open source) automated testing suite for web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is quite similar to HP Quick Test Pro (QTP) only that Selenium focuses on automating web-based applications.


Selenium is not just a single tool but a suite of software's, each catering to different testing needs of an organization. It has four components.


· Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE): selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is the simplest framework in the Selenium suite and is the easiest one to learn. It is a Firefox plugin that you can install as easily as you can with other plugins.


· Selenium Remote Control (RC): Selenium RC was the flagship testing framework of the whole Selenium project for a long time. This is the first automated web testing tool that allowed users to use a programming language they prefer.


· WebDriver: It implements a more modern and stable approach in automating the browser's actions. WebDriver, unlike Selenium RC, does not rely on JavaScript for automation. It controls the browser by directly communicating to it.


· Selenium Grid: Selenium Grid is a tool used together with Selenium RC to run parallel tests across different machines and different browsers all at the same time. Parallel execution means running multiple tests at once.






Why do we need to automate?


§ To avoid human intervention


§ To make it fast and productive


§ To make it reusable or repeatable 

§ To make it reliable