Selenium has been a pretty popular tool among automation testers. While there are multiple ways to use it, the most popular option had been to use it with WebDriver. Using Selenium with WebDriver requires the testers to have a good hands-on programming knowledge and is also tedious especially when the product is having quick releases with frequent changes.
While the IDE can solve some of the very key pain points discovered with WebDriver, latest Selenium IDE has some new exciting additions that can make automation testing really efficient from a product stability standpoint.
Here are 5 new additions to Selenium IDE that you should know to perform effective automation testing.
Cross Browser Availability
When Selenium IDE first came into the picture, it was only available on Firefox, now it is available on popular google chrome as well. It’s simple to add the IDE as an extensions on both Firefox as well as on google chrome. This makes cross browser testing a lot more easier than ever.
Debugger
Selenium IDE now has an option to apply breakpoints, this makes debugging a lot more easier as you can break and inspect the script at multiple instances and check the execution state to find any issues in the execution.
Selenium IDE Scripts can now be edited
In the previous releases there were no options available to alter the automation workflow once created. Ultimately, editing a workflow was not an easy process. In-fact it constrained the user to create an entirely new script with the desired modifications.
Currently the editing options support following functions which greatly enhances the flexibility of the tests
- Cut
- Copy
- Paste
- Delete
- Insert new command
- Play to this point
- Record from here
- Play from here
- Toggle breakpoint
- Clear all command
Locators
We all are aware that when any application is under development, your locators seems to change very frequently. To tackle this, Selenium IDE now has a feature to capture all the locators and store it, which in case of failure, tries to find the element with alternative locators captured while recording the scripts.
Waiting Time
Load time of the test execution can vary on each execution based on multiple factors including internet connectivity, page load speed, available infrastructure and the current traffic. While your automation tests, especially with a WebDriver may run perfectly with a local / staging environment, this might not be a sustainable solution as an explicit wait time or a constant loop is needed over the execution to find the locator / placeholders.
To solve this crucial problem, Selenium IDE implicitly waits for a page to finish the loading to continue the further execution. This feature also comes with an explicit speed of execution which can be either slow or fast and can be selected on a scale.
The IDE also comes up with some more exciting features like exporting the script in multiple programming languages, can also be integrated with a CI tool, the IDE scripts can be managed in a code repository, availability of a wide range of plugins etc.