Selenium IDE - Introduction

The Selenium-IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is an easy-to-use Firefox and Chrome plug-in to develop Selenium test cases. It is typically used for the record and play feature with which the test cases can be developed.

What is Selenium IDE?

Selenium Integrated Development Environment is a very easy tool to learn and use for testing any web application. It is open-source and not heavily dependent on any specific software and can be installed very easily. The latest version of Selenium Integrated Development Environment can be used both in Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Selenium Integrated Development Environment basically provides a Graphical Interface which enables the user to record all the actions that are performed on the application under test.

Selenium Integrated Development Environment can be used very well for the purpose of debugging scripts by setting up breakpoints in and around any test steps for troubleshooting errors in test cases.

The logic put up for a particular test case can be re-utilised in another test case with the help of the run command in Selenium Integrated Development Environment.

Benefits of Using Selenium IDE

Selenium Integrated Development Environment also gives the feature to use more than one locator to identify elements which make it an easy choice tool for automating tests. Selenium Integrated Development Environment is based on the Selenese commands with which it comprehends what activities it needs to perform for the purpose of testing.

Because of the ease of use, the Selenium Integrated Development Environment can be used by any one to develop automated test cases without requiring any technical expertise.

How to Use Selenium IDE?

Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE) can be used by installing its Addon available from the Chrome and Firefox web store store. As a precondition for Selenium Integrated Development Environment installation, we would need the browsers Chrome and Firefox installed in the local machine.

To begin the installation of Selenium Integrated Development Environment in Chrome and Firefox, we can make use of the below link −

https://www.selenium.dev/selenium-ide/.

Why to Use Selenium IDE?

The test scripts generated by simply recording a test in the Selenium Integrated Development Environment can either be used directly or edited as per other test cases. Moreover, the recorded scripts can be converted into various programming languages supported by Selenium and the scripts can be executed on other browsers as well. As a result, the Selenium Integrated Development Environment can be used as the initial tool to kick off automation testing for any simple web application.

When to Use Selenium IDE?

Selenium Integrated Development Environment can be used heavily by the testers who are testing a web application manually and performing redundant steps over a large amount of time. Its record and play, and other suitable features has made it a very popular tool. It does not require a high end programming knowledge, which makes it an easy choice for early adaptation of automated testing in any project.

Thus, we had discussed some of the features of Selenium Integrated Development Environment which would help us to understand the tool.