Selenium is an open source tool for automating web application testing. There are three main variants: Selenium IDE for recording and playing back tests in Firefox, Selenium Core for running tests on a web server, and Selenium Remote Control (RC) for running tests across browsers from any programming language. Selenium RC requires installing a Java server and client library for the chosen language. Tests are then written in that language and can execute across browsers by starting the server. Selenium IDE provides a simple recording and playback option directly in Firefox but has limited browser support.