Part 4: Using Selenium IDE - Basics

Okay, so now that we have installed Selenium IDE on FireFox, the next thing that we need to do is to launch it and see what it can do for you.

Here is what you need:

• FireFox
• Selenium IDE installed

a. Launching Selenium IDE

In FireFox, click on the Tools menu -> Selenium IDE or type in Ctrl + Alt + S to launch Selenium IDE

See the image below for the menu item.

b. When Selenium IDE is launched, this is what you will see:

c. View Tutorial 1 - Selenium Basics

Part 3: Setting up Selenium IDE

Okay, so now that we have a bit of information on what Selenium is and what it can be used for, we will see how to install the IDE. We will also get to see how to get the Selenium WebDriver running with Eclipse a little later in the series.

What you will need:

- FireFox Web browser
- Selenium IDE installation files


Where to get the FireFox Web browser?

a. Navigate to http://download.mozilla.org

b. Click on link above to download FireFox.
c. Go through the standard installation instructions and install FireFox.
d. Start up FireFox.

Once FireFox has started up, move on to the next section;

Installing Selenium IDE

a. From within FireFox, navigate to http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/

b. Click on the Download Selenium link which will take you to the following page:

c. Click on the highlighted link. This is vary depending on whichever version of the IDE is available at the current time.

d. Click on Allow and then click on Install when asked to do so.

e. When the installation is completed, click on Restart Now to restart FireFox and finalise the installation of Selenium IDE.

f. When FireFox has restarted, click on the Tools menu and verify that Selenium IDE is now displayed on the menu as follows:

g. Well done! You have now successfully installed Selenium IDE on FireFox.

Stay tuned for the next article in the series where we go through basic instructions on how to use Selenium IDE.

Part 2: Difference between Selenium IDE and WebDriver

Choices, choices, choices...

With such a large variety of choices available to us in the QA world, this article will help to make the decision on choosing which solution is appropriate for your test environment.

Let's take a look at the basic differences between Selenium IDE and Selenium WebDriver.

Selenium IDE

- Great for beginners and testing novices
- Easy to use record and playback capabilities
- Can quickly create low to medium complexity automated tests
- Can only be used on FireFox as it is an addon

Selenium WebDriver

- Great for intermediate to advanced levels
- Requires a greater level of configuration to set up a test environment
- Can be used to create highly complex automated tests
- Can be used to automate a large variety of web browsers

Part 1: What is Selenium?

The QA industry is very diverse, and with that diversity brings a multitude of different testing tools.

Selenium is one of those opensource tools that allows you to develop automated tests for Web sites while enabling integration in to the test management tool of your choice, with a few tweaks.

In short, Selenium is a tool that automates web browsers in order to be able to test web sites and web applications.

Image: Courtesy of SeleniumHQ

It comes in two flavours to suit a variety of needs for different projects:

- Selenium IDE

- Selenium WebDriver

There are many different tools out there in the QA market, but few have the community support and technical reach of Selenium. Some argue that there are more established vendors out there with more "popular" tools available. This may be true, but when it comes to ROI in setting up an automated test environment with Selenium at the core, it is indeed very attractive.

This series of tutorials aims to help build a set of core skills to enable people to use Selenium effectively.

Part 2 - Differences between Selenium IDE and WebDriver