Preface

Selenium WebDriver is an open source software-testing tool used to automate web-based applications that is platform independent and that can be accessed by any popular programming languages. It's been about a decade since Jason Huggins started the Selenium project in 2004 at Thoughtworks. Later, in 2008, Simon Stewart combined his work on WebDriver with Selenium to give a new birth to Selenium WebDriver. Today, Selenium WebDriver is the most widely used web-automation tool around the world.

This book provides guidance that will help readers grasp Selenium WebDriver concepts fast. You will learn about the advanced features of the Selenium IDE and Selenium Builder, followed by cross-browser tests, methods of Selenium WebDriver, best practices involved, and extensive ideas to create a Selenium framework.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Selenium IDE, provides intense ideas to practice record-and-playback IDEs such as the Selenium IDE and Selenium Builder.

Chapter 2, Selenium WebDriver Cross-browser Tests, helps you to do efficient compatibility tests. Here, we will also learn about how to run tests in the cloud.

Chapter 3, Selenium WebDriver Functions, delivers all the functions of Selenium WebDriver in detail with examples on each.

Chapter 4, Selenium WebDriver Best Practices, explains how to manage Selenium automation tasks with dissimilar techniques.

Chapter 5, Selenium WebDriver Frameworks, guides you to customize and build any kind of automation framework using Selenium WebDriver.

What you need for this book

• Microsoft Windows

• MAC / Ubuntu (Linux)

• Eclipse IDE/IntelliJ IDEA

• Selenium IDE

• Selenium Builder

• Mozilla Firefox

• Google Chrome

• Internet Explorer

• Opera

• Apple Safari

• Microsoft Excel

Who this book is for

Selenium Essentials is intended for software professionals who want to learn about Selenium WebDriver from scratch and for testers who want to migrate from Selenium RC to Selenium WebDriver. This book delivers an easy learning curve for Selenium newbies who want to begin with Selenium WebDriver and a perfect guide for intermediate Selenium testers to become masters in Selenium WebDriver.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Now, replace the directory on your code with C:/Users/user_name/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/New User."

A block of code is set as follows:

<testdata>
  <testvarname="value" />
  <testvarname="value" />
  <testvarname="value" />
</testdata>

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

driver.switchTo().frame(value);

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ Unzip chromedriver_linux64.zip
$ cp chromedriver /usr/local/bin
$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/chromedriver

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "It will prompt you to enter the admin password; enter it to set the path."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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