Selenium 4 Beta 1 is the latest available version of Selenium automation testing tool. It is an advanced tool suite that has various components included in it i.e., Selenium WebDriver, Selenium IDE and Selenium Grid. This tool suite comes with various features such as Selenium Grid, W3C compliance, advanced IDE, New APIs, and many more. The latest Selenium version has several additional benefits like seamless integration, parallel testing, cross-browser testing, better documentation, etc. that make Selenium testing much easier.

Selenium 4 – New Features And Improvements (Infographic)

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Today, every business needs high-quality software in less time, and to achieve high-quality software, organizations need effective software testing by leveraging automation testing. With agile and DevOps methodologies on the go, software automation testing is taking new heights. The test automation process helps to quicken the testing process with re-usable test suites, and there are many test automation frameworks used by QA testers.

Content 1.  Selenium Tool Overview 2.  Major differences between Selenium 2 and Selenium 3 3.  What is Selenium 4? 4.  What is the difference between Selenium 3 and Selenium 4? 5.  What are the new features of Selenium 4? 6.  What is deprecated and changed in Selenium 4? 7.  How can TestingXperts (Tx) help businesses with their Selenium Automation Testing need? 8.  Conclusion

Selenium Tool Overview

Though there are varieties of automation frameworks available, one framework that is widely used by testing teams across the globe for automation testing is the selenium framework. Different versions of Selenium released in the market include Selenium 1 (Selenium RC), Selenium 2, Selenium 3, and the recently updated Selenium 4 beta. Selenium tool has a marked presence in the automation testing world due to its open-source nature and numerous features that make the testing process faster when compared to other tools.

Selenium is the most preferred tool suite that is used to automate tests for web applications. The tool has the capability to operate across different browsers and operating systems. Selenium  is an automation test suite that has various components given below:

– Selenium Core

– Selenium RC

– Selenium IDE

– Selenium Grid

– Selenium Webdriver

Selenium 2 and Selenium 3 have been in use for many years now, and have some differences between them given in a tabular form below.

Major differences between Selenium 2 and Selenium 3

What is Selenium 4?

Selenium 4 Beta 1 is the latest version of Selenium that has been released on 15^th February 2021. This new tool suite comes with advanced features such as Selenium grid, W3C compliance, advanced IDE, New APIs, and many more. Selenium 4  is a suite of tools that has various components in it as given below:

Selenium WebDriver –

It is an open-source API that allows the creation of robust browser-based regression automation suites and tests, scales, and distributes scripts across many environments. The webDriver also allows to interact with the browser just like a real user

Selenium IDE –

It is a Chrome and Firefox add-on that simply records and playbacks the user interactions with the browser

Selenium Grid-

It allows saving time by distributing and running tests on multiple browsers, operating systems, and machines. It enables the management of multiple environments from a central point.

What is the difference between Selenium 3 and Selenium 4?

What are the new features of Selenium 4?

1. WebDriver became W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Standardization:

• Selenium WebDriver is now W3C Standardized, and this WebDriver provides a friendly and flexible API for browser automation

• W3C standard encourages compatibility across various software implementations of WebDriver and API.

• Most of the W3C standards revolve around the standardization of web technologies, making the framework more stable and reducing complexities across browsers.

2. Selenium Grid enhanced with updates:

• The earlier versions of Selenium Grid were complex as it was based on Hub and Node(s) architecture. The Hub and Node(s) need to be separately started when performing automation tests.

• In Selenium 4, Hub and Node (s) are packed in a single jar file, which means once the server starts, it acts as both Hub and Node.

• The Grid also supports IPV6 addresses, allowing its users to communicate with the Grid using the HTTPS protocol with support for TLS connections.

• Selenium Grid has a more scalable and traceable infrastructure that supports four processes: Router, Session Map, Distributor, and Node.

• The new Selenium Grid comes with Docker support, allowing testers and developers to spin up containers rather than setting up heavy virtual machines.

The above feature gives users the flexibility of deploying Selenium Grid on Kubernetes. Selenium Grid 4 can be beneficial and can result in the DevOps process as it supports tools like AWS, Azure, and more.

3. Selenium 4 IDE upgraded:

• Selenium IDE is a record and playback tool that was available as an add-on for Firefox in the earlier Selenium versions but got deprecated as the latest Firefox versions were standardized under the Web Extension Mechanism.

• Selenium 4 version has it as an add-on for major web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, MS Edge, etc.

• The latest update has a user interface to deliver an intuitive user experience, and it also comes with a SIDE tool, i.e., Selenium IDE runner, that allows QAs to run projects on a node.js platform.

• This feature enables QA teams to run cross-browser tests on local or Cloud Selenium Grid. It has an improved control flow mechanism that allows testers to write better “while” and “if” conditions.

• Another feature includes the code for test cases recorded using updated Selenium IDE can be exported to the desired programming language like Java, C#, Python, .NET, and JavaScript, thus giving more flexibility to testers.

4. Relative Locators for automation scripts

• Selenium 4 brought an easy way of locating elements with the inclusion of relative locators.

• Relative locators, also referred to as Friendly locators, help locate WebElements near to, left of, right of, above, and below a specified element.

• It supports the usage of withTagName (in Selenium 4 Java) or with_tag_name (in Selenium 4 Python). It helps locate web elements based on the visual location relative to other DOM elements.

5. Chrome Debugging Protocol (CDP)

• Selenium 4 provides native support for Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) through the DevTools interface.

• It allows QAs to use Chrome development properties like Fetch, Network, Profiler, Performance, Application cache, and more.

• This feature helps developers and QAs to test and resolve critical bugs for specific web pages faster and on the fly.

• QA teams can also leverage the APIs offered by Chrome DevTools to simulate poor network conditions and perform geolocation testing.

• This feature also allows testers to check how the product performs under varying network conditions such as 3G, 4G, 5G, etc.

6. Multiple Windows and Tabs Management

• While testing the software testers have to switch across multiple windows, tabs, or applications in a single test flow.

• In the earlier versions on Selenium, it was not easy to manage multiple windows or tabs as it required testers to create a new Web Driver object. Post which used to switch to the new window (or tab) using the unique WindowHandle to perform subsequent actions in that window (or tab).

• But this has improved in Selenium 4. The latest version of Selenium comes with a new API – newWindow that allows testers to create and switch to a new window/tab without creating a new WebDriver object in a single test flow or session.

7. Telemetry and GraphQL:

A framework called Open Telemetry has been added to Selenium Grid. This feature brings more observability into Grid as it allows testers to see what’s happening inside the Grid, especially when something goes wrong while running the test.

Also, the Grid now has a new front-end console, which is powered by a GraphQL endpoint. It allows testers to run a GraphQL query against the Selenium grid, either distributed or on the local machine. This feature helps testers extract useful metrics and information from the Grid to fulfill the monitoring needs.

Joe Colantonio in his latest article on “What is Selenium 4? The latest in Automated Browser Testing” has in detail explained about all these above features and the importance of Selenium 4.

8. Improved Documentation:

With the earlier versions of Selenium, users use to face a lot of difficulties with the documentation part as there were some lackings in the documentation capabilities of Selenium.

This has significantly improved in the latest versions of Selenium. Selenium 4.0 provides better documentation capabilities.

• Its documentation part has been completely revamped with a neat UI that allows users to easily navigate to the desired section of the page and covers all information about tools and APIs that comes under the Selenium umbrella.

• This will help testers gain information about all the features required to get started with selenium testing.

What is deprecated and changed in Selenium 4?

1. Deprecation of Desired Capabilities

Desired capabilities were primarily used in the test script for defining the test environment (browser name, version, operating system) for executing tests on Selenium Grid. This has now been replaced with Options. It means testers now have to create an Options object, set test requirements, and pass the object to the Driver constructor. Below listed are the Options objects that have been included in Selenium 4.0

Firefox – FirefoxOptions

Chrome – ChromeOptions

Internet Explorer (IE) – InternetExplorerOptions

Microsoft Edge – EdgeOptions

Safari – SafariOptions

2. Changes in the Action Class

Action class is used to simulate input actions from a keyboard or mouse on specific web elements. For e.g, Left-click, Right-click, Double-click, etc.

Following changes have been made to Action Class in Selenium 4.0

• click(WebElement) has replaced moveToElement(onElement).click() {}

• clickAndHold(WebElement) has replaced moveToElement(onElement).clickAndHold()

• contextClick(WebElement) has replaced moveToElement(onElement).contextClick()

• doubleClick(WebElement) has replaced moveToElement(element).doubleClick()

• release() which was ealier a part of org.openqa.selenium.interactions.ButtonReleaseAction class has now been moved to Action class as per new update of Selenium 4.0

3. Deprecation of FindsBy

In the older version of Selenium, FindsBy interfaces were a part of org.openqa.selenium.internal package. It contains findElement(By) and findElements(By) methods, implemented by the RemoteWebDriver class. However, these have now been deprecated in Selenium 4.0.

4. Changes in FluentWait

In Selenium 4.0, the methods withTimeout() and pollingEvery() that are a part of the FluentWait class have been modified. The pollingEvery() method only accepts one parameter – Duration that can be in Seconds, MilliSeconds, NanoSeconds, Hours, Days, etc. Similarly, the withTimeOut() method also accepts only one parameter – Duration.

How can TestingXperts (Tx) help businesses with their Selenium Automation Testing need?

Enterprises must note that Selenium testing should be done by experienced selenium test automation engineers. To get the complete benefits of selenium testing, businesses can partner with an experienced automation engineer from an independent testing services provider.

TestingXperts (Tx) is a NextGen QA and Software testing company that has dedicated teams with core expertise on all industry-leading tools like Selenium, HP UFT, Coded UI, TestComplete, Ranorex, Appium, etc. We have a global presence with offices in the USA, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, and test labs strategically placed in multiple locations in India (Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Bangalore).

Conclusion

Today, almost every business has realized the importance of automation testing. And to fulfil this growing demand for automation testing numerous test automation tools and frameworks are made available in the market today. Out of all the available automation testing frameworks and tools, one tool that is widely used by testers all across the globe is Selenium. Recently a new update of Selenium was rolled out in the market that gained a lot of attraction from the audience. The latest Selenium version i.e., Selenium 4.0 has several additional benefits like seamless integration, parallel testing, cross-browser testing, better documentation, etc. that make Selenium testing much easier. Businesses must read all the features and differentiators of Selenium 4.0 as mentioned in this blog before investing in any automation testing framework or tool.

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6 Best Practices for Selenium Testing

The post 6 Best Practices for Selenium Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. An Introduction to Selenium Testing 2. What type of testing is selenium commonly used for? 3. What are the benefits of test automation? 4. What are the steps for Selenium testing? 5. What are the best practices for Selenium Testing? 6. Why should businesses prefer Selenium Automation Testing? 7. How to learn selenium automation testing? 8. Selenium vs QTP vs RFT 9. Conclusion

An Introduction to Selenium Testing

What are the components of Selenium?

1. Selenium Remote Control (RC)

2. Selenium IDE (Selenium Integrated Development Environment)

3. Selenium WebDriver

4. Selenium Grid

What type of testing is selenium commonly used for?

What are the benefits of test automation

What are the steps for Selenium testing?

What are the best practices for Selenium Testing?

Take stance of an application under test (AUT):

Leverage page object model (POM):

Usage of right locators:

Tests should be independent of each other:

Proper usage of Wait and Sleep commands is critical:

Prefer using latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

Why should businesses prefer Selenium Automation Testing?

Selenium vs QTP vs RFT

What is QuickTest Professional (QTP)?

QTP is an automated testing tool that helps testers execute automated tests for identifying gaps, defects or errors in an application that is being tested. QTP uses the platform of Visual Basic scripting for carrying out the automation testing process.

A few of the tools offered by QTP are as follows:

What is Rational Functional Testing (RFT)?

RFT is an object-oriented, automated, functional and regression testing tool. RFT helps to perform functional, GUI, regression and data-driven testing. RFT works well with a range of applications such as .Net, Java, Siebel, Ajax, PowerBuilder, SAP, Adobe PDF documents, Adobe flex, Windows, Silverlight.

QA teams leverage the potential of RFT to perform automated regression testing.

Difference between Selenium and QTP:

Difference between Selenium and RFT:

How to learn selenium automation testing?

Conclusion:

The post Selenium Testing Overview and Why Should Businesses Leverage It for Automation? first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. Why Your Business Should Prefer Selenium Automation Testing? 2. Key Features of Selenium Automation Testing Framework 3. Significance of Selenium Automation Testing 4. Best Practices of Selenium Automation Testing 5. Conclusion

Software test automation is the key to success in today’s agile and DevOps processes, as the test automation tools and frameworks deliver faster and quality releases due to accurate testing that is achieved with effective test scripts execution. Test automation tools are available as both open source tools and paid tools. Selenium tool is the most widely used open-source test automation tool. It is best suited for all web applications across browsers and delivers effective results for all tests and is an easy-to-use tool with numerous effective features.

1. Selenium RC:

2. Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE):

3. Selenium WebDriver:

4. Selenium Grid:

Why Your Business Should Prefer Selenium Automation Testing?

Key Features of Selenium Automation Testing Framework:

1.Open source availability:

2. Support for Language and Framework:

3. Ease of Implementation:

4. Continuous Upgrades and Updates:

5. Parallel Test Execution:

6. Flexibility:

7. Multi-browser support:

8. Highly-Portable language:

Significance of Selenium Automation Testing:

10 Best Practices of Selenium Automation Testing Framework:

1. Understand the Application at First Place:

It is utmost important for enterprises to have a first-hand understanding of the application to be tested. If automation is required for a web application, then selenium tool can be effectively used. In addition, it is also essential to know about the underlying technologies being used. In case of desktop applications, it is essential to check if any third party controls are involved and have an evaluation of the language used to build that application.

2. Adopt Page Object Model (POM):

This is a popular test automation design pattern that helps to develop robust automation testing frameworks which are resistant to any small tweaks made in the user interface. The major benefit with this page object model is that it enhances test maintenance and reduces the duplication in code. In these models, the web pages are defined as classes and the different elements on the page become the variables and the user interactions are commonly implemented as methods. The POM frameworks are comparatively more reliable and are easy to maintain. The scripts are readable and the test scripts are reusable. It also eliminates duplicity altogether and hence POM is preferred over other models.

3. Adhere to the usage of Right Locators:

At the heart of selenium frameworks is interaction with the browser allowing to navigate, click, type, and check different objects. This all is achieved using different types of locators. These locators include Class, ID, Link Text, Xpath, CSS Selector and Tag Name. Thus, selecting the right locators is utmost important

4. Keep the Tests Independent of Each other:

Independent testing strategy wherein testing a single action or process is independent of the other. This type of testing avoids chained and brittle tests. Hence, tests should be kept as small as possible especially automated functional testing in agile and Continuous integration DevOps models on the go it is always suitable to maintain small tests.

5. Prefer to use Wait command in place of Thread. Sleep:

It is always preferred to use Wait command and it is more important to understand the usage of implicit wait and explicit wait instead of using the Sleep command. This Sleep command waits until the defined time even after the task is completed; while wait command performs the actual time to wait. Sleep command slows down the test while with the Wait, the test time is not affected.

6. Use Selenium for System Functional testing:

Automation testing framework using Selenium is best suited when the same test and the same code is used for different inputs. It is most preferred for system functional testing as well as for browser compatibility testing.

7. Prefer to Use Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

The Selenium server is programmed with Java and hence it is important to use latest version of JRE to avoid any run time errors.

8. Ensure proper communication between QA, Developers, and Operations teams:

With the agile and DevOps methodologies on the go, it is important to have proper collaboration between various teams of QA, developers and operations to achieve successful selenium testing.

9. Follow a Proper Test Naming Strategy:

10. Hire a Dedicated Automation Engineer:

Conclusion:

Enterprises should prefer Selenium as a promising test automation tool for automating all their web applications due to its enhanced features. Leverage our customized selenium test automation frameworks to achieve faster time to market and quicker ROI along with assured quality results. Connect with our testing experts today!

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