Selenium is a widely adopted open-source automation testing framework that is designed to help users test web applications across various browsers and platforms. Selenium is not just a single tool but a set of tools that helps testers to automate web-based applications more efficiently. This comprehensive tutorial will help you gain an in-depth understanding of Selenium and how to use it to streamline your testing processes.

Components of Selenium

In this tutorial, you will find a detailed description on the following four tools that form the Selenium suite −Selenium IDE − Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a Firefox plugin that lets testers to record their actions as they follow the workflow that they need to test. It allows users to create test scripts without having to write codes manually. Although it offers a quick start, Selenium IDE is not usually recommended for testing complex scenarios.

• Selenium RC − Selenium Remote Control (RC) was the flagship testing framework that allowed more than simple browser actions and linear execution. It can help you use the full power of programming languages such as Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby and PERL to create more complex tests.
• Selenium WebDriver − Selenium WebDriver is the successor to Selenium RC which sends commands directly to the browser and retrieves results. WebDriver is meant for automating browser interactions. It provides a simple API for controlling the browsers and help users interact with web elements.
• Selenium Grid − Selenium Grid is meant for executing parallel tests across multiple machines. Due to the distribution of test execution across different environments, it can greatly minimize the testing time.