The Legacy Of Automation Testing Tools

Legacy Of Automation Testing Tools: In 1877, Thomas Edison first discovered the term ‘bug’ for a technical defect. Since then, the technology sphere has expanded a lot, and finding ‘bugs’ has become way more complicated than it was earlier. 

To find bugs in software with almost zero manual labor, Automation Testing stepped into the technical sphere. Automation Testing is a software testing technique that executes a test case suite using unique and advanced automated testing software tools. The best part about Automation Testing is that we see advancements and get introduced to improved testing tools with digital expansion.  

What happens in the backend? The automation testing tool compares the actual and expected test result after entering the test data in the System Under Test report. The final aim is to reduce the number of Manual test cases.

The legacy of Automation Testing Tools changed after Selenium, but knowing everything from its origination to its working is essential before starting your software testing journey.

Introducing Selenium: The New-Age Automation Tool

Selenium is an open-source software qa services that has various tools and libraries that support web-based automation. It supports automated testing framework to validate web apps across numerous platforms and browsers. You can create Selenium Testing Scripts with Python, Java, or C# because of Selenium’s multiple language support feature.

In 2021 Selenium hit the Automation Testing market and took software testing to another level where old manual testing takes hours to spot bugs, Selenium needs just a few seconds to test complete underlying code and UI.

Selenium got introduced when the world demanded a de facto product as an advanced open-source software testing Automation Tool. The best part about Selenium is that it supports many programming languages and is functional in almost all major Operating Systems and browsers. Presently, Selenium is used by big tech giants like Netflix, HubSpot, Fitbit, Google, and many more.

Moreover, Selenium provides numerous solutions for nearly all testing problems and requirements. There are many reasons why Selenium stayed at the top even after so many years of creation. Some of the primary reasons why every brand look for Selenium are; 

• It’s Free!

Selenium is the only free automation testing software tool available in the market. Selenium can compete with all paid testing software tools even after being free of cost. Katalon Studio is the only alternative that can compete with Selenium, but still, Katalon Studio loses the battle with limited language choices and Operating systems. 

Selenium’s open-source makes it a low entry point for small businesses and startups, but big companies now prefer Selenium over other paid options. It saves thousands of dollars every year.

• Integration with DevOps, Agile and Continuous Delivery 

It was Selenium that first narrated DevOps and Agile. Selenium fits with its Automation Testing tool into the main principles of Agile, Continuous Delivery, or DevOps. 

The unmatched flexibility of Selenium is because it is portable to almost all popular platforms and even doesn’t demand learning new languages. Some of the popular development platforms where selenium gets integrated are-

• Jenkins, Maven
• TestNG
• QMetry
• SauceLabs

• Mobile Testing Support

Web Mobile apps hybrids can be tested using Selenium. But, in this case, you need additional software though for testing. The two most popular software testing options available are Selendroid and Appium; this software is easy to use for developers as these are based on Selenium.

• A large number of supported Languages, Platforms, and Browsers

Selenium supports ten popular programming languages, the highest of other paid testing tools like Java, Ruby, C#, PHP, JavaScript, and Python. Apart from multiple language support, Selenium is also the only mainstream tool available in the industry that covers Linux testing.

• Libraries for Extensions and Plugins 

To extend the standard functionality of Selenium, we use Plugins, and every year we see a fresh new list of plugins. Apart from Appium and Selendroid, many different plugins are available on Github. To find an extension as per your need, google “Selenium plugins <tool name>,” and your favorite plugin is on your screen.

What Was There Before Selenium? 

Automation Testing started in the pre-2000s and looks for new upgrades and advanced features. Here’s a quick overview of automation from the pre-2000s to till date.

Before 2000 

• Debugging Line-By-Line Of Code

In 1967, IBM published ‘Evaluation of the Functional Testing of Control Programs’ on a white paper, and from then on, Software Testing came into play. At that time, testing was done by debugging the code line-by-line.

• Manual Testing

In 1968, the NATO Science Committee discussed the quality of software products after this testing started taking place in a very planned and organized manner, although everything was manual.

• Test Documents And Exploratory Testing

And it was in 1982, the first version of the IEEE 829 was published; it’s a Standard for Software Test Documentation. However, in 1998, the very first European certification for software testing arrived.

Post-2000s

• CI and Scripted Manual Testing

Martin Fowler was the first person to write the first version of the paper Continuous Integration in 2001. This was the time when software testing boosted up to another level. To find any integration error, the person must first study topics like automated build scripts, self-testing code, and automation to find integration errors as quickly as possible.

• Development After Test

Later after one year in 2002, another buzzword named the software development technique to the software testing tool where at first, the tests are written before the functionality get coded.

• Testing In the Cloud 

The most advanced software testing tool is cloud testing. At present, most people or brands rely on the internet and cloud technologies. Cloud testing is the best and most advanced software testing tool that can even deal with higher complexity in software.

What Are The Different Types of Testing Automated with Selenium?

Types of testing with Selenium Automation are:

• Compatibility Testing: QA testers perform compatibility testing to make sure that the web app software meets all necessary performance benchmarks when used on different browser and Operating System combinations.
• Integration Testing: This is the type of testing developers do, especially to verify their separately coded units/modules. The aim is to ensure that the units/modules run when placed together. 
• Regression Testing: It’s a series of tests used to ensure all newly created features work smoothly with the existing system. 
• Performance Testing: QA testers perform a series of tests to ensure that the particular project fulfills all the necessary performance marks placed by the stakeholders. 
• System Testing: This is also the type of testing done by the Testers/QA professionals with almost zero context of previously executed tests or code. 
• End-to-end Testing: This testing is typically done from the user’s point of view to make sure that all touchpoints present in the web app are working fine and smooth or not.

Perform Selenium Testing With LambdaTest 

LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross-browser comprehensive testing platform that supports modern Automated Testing frameworks like Selenium and Cypress to perform automated browser testing. LambdaTest provides automated, manual, and live-interactive testing for over 3000+ Real Browsers and Operating Systems online and has gained the trust of over 600,000+ users in 130+ countries.

So, why the wait? Start testing your web and mobile applications with our advanced automation testing platform.

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