Selenium

This is my first post on selenium - A web based automation testing tool. I got in touch with selenium when I  was hired to automate an application and I choose to use selenium. I must admit that it was confusing for me at the start, but as I read and did more practice, I was better than before :)

I had used Watir before using selenium, It was natural for me to compare both. Advantage of selenium was that it had IDE unlike watir which made selenium look more easy. but today I feel there is no advantage because I don't use IDE at all. In real time projects most people don't often use IDE for automation.

For  a new tester who wants to learn automation, IDE is a good way for getting the feel of automation, motivating testers to do more, BUT there comes a point during the learning curve of a tester, where recording and running script is no more happy happy or motivating.

Next level requires some sort of scripting or programming skills, this is a challenge for some one who has never written a single piece of code. Either you give up and boast you know automation till record and playback or you start the challenging journey to learn.

Selenium provides a decent list of options to choose as a supporting language, this is more confusing to someone who has never programmed, which language to choose?

Initially its confusing & struggle to kickstart, but persisting will help you overcome and add to your learning curve. There are different tools provided by selenium that you need to understand and choose the options that you want to use for your automation.

SeleniumRC, Web-Driver, Grid, IDE, Different language options

Selenium Groups is a good place to join, you can hear and ask, you get lots of valuble learning tips.

In addition, there are different tools used if you are developing automation as a fulltime project, it almost similar to any develpment project that needs versioning tools, build tools, development environment..etc

Will be talking more about selenium experiences in upcoming posts

Have a good time :)