The Ultimate Guide to Testing With Selenium

Selenium is well-known by DevOps professionals as a leading open source browser testing framework. Selenium is a suite of tools that enables testers and development teams to automate software testing. Today’s software development cycle makes manual testing almost impossible. The framework helps organizations move toward test automation as agile development has intensified the pace of web app development in the last decades.

While Selenium is one of the standard frameworks for test automation, many teams still feel uncertain of exactly how to take their Selenium testing to the next level. Below we’re sharing an introduction to Selenium that will fast-track your Selenium setup and success.

Selenium Grid enables parallel testing against different OSs and browsers on different machines. The Selenium Grid enables distributed test execution, which helps reduce the total time it takes for a test suite to achieve a complete pass. Choosing Selenium Grid also provides a number of benefits, including more scalable testing, more reliable results, and easier maintenance of both the hardware and software.

The way software is developed today is a fully orchestrated event. It requires specialists from across the organization to contribute. The crucial process of cross-browser testing requires Devops/Agile teams to collaborate to ensure risk is mitigated and applications are delivered with customer-ready quality. For many teams, Selenium is framework powering their test automation. To fully optimize Selenium test automation, there are certain tools that can help. See below for our best resource about choosing the best Selenium tools for test automation.

While Selenium is the leading open source test automation framework, there are other options to choose from. One in particular is gaining attention. Cypress is an alternative to Selenium and is a JavaScript test automation solution that enables testers to build test automation scripts. Cypress empowers frontend developers and test engineers to write test scripts in JavaScript.

Deciding between Cypress vs. Selenium is a relatively common debate in DevOps. In our guide we explore this debate.

Selenium is a valuable test automation framework for small companies to established enterprises. As an open source tool, it is the system many companies use to get started with test automation. With any open source technology there are drawbacks. For example, Selenium does not have built-in reporting, which is a crucial element in today’s data-focused society. In this article we explore the limitations of Selenium and how to use specific tools and tactics to optimize the Selenium framework.

Selenium is the market leader in test automation frameworks, but it’s also important to know there are many emerging test automation solutions. Your organization may have specific needs in automation that could be served by another framework. Often the most optimal solution is a tool stack that is custom selected for your business based on your resources, team skillset, and software development approach. To help you discover the best web testing frameworks for your enterprise, we’ve prepared a guide. Learn more about 10 automation solutions and which one is right for your testing needs.