Notes For Selenium
What is Selenium?
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.
1. Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
2. Selenium Remote Control (RC)
3. WebDriver
4. Selenium Grid
Who developed Selenium?
Since Selenium is a collection of different tools, it had different developers as well. Below are the key
persons who made notable contributions to the Selenium Project
Introduction to Selenium
Primarily, Selenium was created by Jason Huggins in 2004. An engineer at ThoughtWorks, he was
working on a web application that required frequent testing. Having realized that the repetitious manual
testing of their application was becoming more and more inefficient, he created a JavaScript program
that would automatically control the browser's actions. He named this program as the
"JavaScriptTestRunner."
Seeing potential in this idea to help automate other web applications, he made JavaScriptRunner open-
source which was later re-named as Selenium Core.
Birth of Selenium Remote Control (Selenium RC)
Unfortunately; testers using Selenium Core had to install the whole application under test and the web
server on their own local computers because of the restrictions imposed by the same origin policy. So
another ThoughtWork's engineer, Paul Hammant, decided to create a server that will act as an HTTP
proxy to "trick" the browser into believing that Selenium Core and the web application being tested
come from the same domain. This system became known as the Selenium Remote Control or
Selenium1.
Birth of Selenium Grid
Selenium Grid was developed by Patrick Lightbody to address the need of minimizing test execution
times as much as possible. He initially called the system "Hosted QA." It was capable of capturing
browser screenshots during significant stages, and also of sending out Selenium commands to different
machines simultaneously.
Birth of Selenium IDE
Shinya Kasatani of Japan created Selenium IDE, a Firefox extension that can automate the browser
through a record-and-playback feature. He came up with this idea to further increase the speed in
creating test cases. He donated Selenium IDE to the Selenium Project in 2006.
Birth of WebDriver
Simon Stewart created WebDriver circa 2006 when browsers and web applications were becoming more
powerful and more restrictive with JavaScript programs like Selenium Core. It was the first cross-
platform testing framework that could control the browser from the OS level.
Birth of Selenium 2
In 2008, the whole Selenium Team decided to merge WebDriver and Selenium RC to form a more
powerful tool called Selenium 2, with WebDriver being the core. Currently, Selenium RC is still being
developed but only in maintenance mode. Most of the Selenium Project's efforts are now focused on
Selenium 2.
So, Why the Name Selenium?
It came from a joke which Jason cracked one time to his team. Another automated testing framework
was popular during Selenium's development, and it was by the company called Mercury Interactive (yes,
the company who originally made QTP before it was acquired by HP). Since Selenium is a well-known
antidote for Mercury poisoning, Jason suggested that name. His teammates took it, and so that is how
we got to call this framework up to the present.
Summary
1.The entire Selenium Tool Suite is comprised of four components:
1.1 Selenium IDE, a Firefox add-on that you can only use in creating relatively simple test cases
and test suites.
1.2 Selenium Remote Control, also known as Selenium 1, which is the first Selenium tool that
allowed users to use programming languages in creating complex tests.
1.3 WebDriver, the newer breakthrough that allows your test scripts to communicate directly
to the browser, thereby controlling it from the OS level.
1.4 Selenium Gridis also a tool that is used with Selenium RC to execute parallel tests across
different browsers and operating systems.
Selenium RC and WebDriver was merged to form Selenium 2.
Selenium is more advantageous than QTP in terms of costs and flexibility. It also allows you to run
tests in parallel, unlike in QTP where you are only allowed to run tests sequentially.
