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Selenium vs. Cypress: Is WebDriver on Its Way Out?

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selenium vs cypressThere’s a new kid on the block for open source test automation tools, and everyone’s talking about how Cypress may be an alternative to Selenium.

But while some have posed that Cypress signals the end of an era, we’re not so sure that Selenium is going anywhere anytime soon.

To better understand the similarities and differences between these two tools, let’s take a better look at what they both do.

Selenium

Selenium WebDriver is the open source automation tool we all know and love. With a history starting from the humble beginnings of IDE and transforming into Selenium 2.0 a.k.a. Selenium WebDriver, Selenium has become a foundation of many modern software teams’ test automation toolkits.

Most are familiar with Selenium’s use — it makes direct calls to the browser using each browser’s native support for automation. By writing a script in Selenese using the compatible programming languages, you can run tests that work as if you were driving the browser yourself.

While the learning curve can be steep for Selenium and requires the knowledge of at least one programming language, it has a vast community of active users and even boasts an annual user conference.

One of the foundations of Selenium is the ability to test on the most popular browsers, making it essential to cross-browser testing.

As Selenium has grown in popularity, it’s not only become a basis of many test automation strategies but has also become an integral part of many third-party tools such as CrossBrowserTesting. Once you know how to use Selenium, you can use these cloud testing tools to access thousands of browsers and leverage parallel testing to cut down on testing time.

Cypress

So how is Cypress different from Selenium, and how is it the same?

First, Cypress is said to have an easier onboarding than Selenium, where all you need to do is install the .exe to get up and running sine all the drivers and dependencies are automatically installed. With Selenium, on the other hand, you need to spend a little more time getting everything up and running.

One of the advantages of Selenium is that it supports most of the major programming languages including Java, Perl PHP, Python, Ruby, and C#, so if your team is already using one of those languages, Cypress may not be ideal since it only supports JavaScript.

In addition, since Cypress tests are written using Mocha and Chai, the syntax echoes what most Javascript users understand. This means that if you work with Javascript, it will be especially easy to start using Cypress. However, if you’re more familiar with another language, it will be fairly complex.

Cypress almost acts as a “freemium” model. Similiar to Selenium which is entirely open sourced unless you integrate with a paid tool, you can also add to Cypress’s core capabilities by leveraging the paid dashboard which includes a test runner that allows you to easily debug tests with DOM snapshots and includes video storage for private projects.

Selenium and Cypress differ in the way of their architecture, as well. Selenium is made up of bindings, or libraries, and the WebDriver, which controls the browsers. These two components work through the JSON network.

Alternatively, while Cypress is used for UI testing, it uses its own unique DOM manipulation and runs directly in the browser with no network communication. Cypress is often cited as a developer-friendly test automation tool for this reason since this often causes frustrations for them in Selenium.

Having a different architecture on top of an Electron app also allows Cypress to be so close to the web application under test that we can do things that you can’t do in Selenium such as stubbing DOM APIs.

One of the biggest gaps between Selenium and Cypress is that while Selenium runs against different browsers, as mentioned before, Cypress only supports Chrome. Selenium’s browser support is often integral to those who use it, making Cypress severely lacking in the area of cross-browser testing.

For software teams that find importance in checking their website on multiple browsers instead of just leaving their code up to chance, finding their way around this deficiency could prove challenging to Cypress users.

Cypress vs Selenium

Cypress and Selenium serve a similar purpose that is achieved in two different ways.

Selenium is a library but requires a unit testing framework or a runner plus an assertions library to build out its capabilities. Cypress provides a robust, complete framework for running automated tests but takes some of the freedom out of Selenium by confining the user to specific frameworks and languages.

If you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to building out a test automation framework, Cypress may be a good option.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you look at how Cypress is built, it is largely a unit testing tool that is will fit best in Javascript-focused development teams. Once you stray from these details and your team decides to experiment with other methods of test automation, you’ll find that Selenium can better accommodate those growing pains.

As a tool made by developers for developers, it’s less a replacement for Selenium and more so a way to introduce developers to test automation.

Like most instances when it comes to test automation, the tool you pick and the method you follow will largely depend on what your team decides and what works best for your organization. However, the notion that Selenium is on its last legs is misled.

If you’re still confused as to the differences between Cypress and Selenium, Automation Rhapsody provides a really great breakdown of how each performs in different categories.

Webinar: Meet the QA Team Behind America’s Test Kitchen

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america's test kitchen QA

America’s Test Kitchen is all about perfecting the recipe for success, literally.

With two TV shows, three print magazine, and four different websites, they’ve built a customer base that is hungry for quality culinary content. But their users are also paying close attention to how they’re being served their online experiences and want to consume it in a way that works best for their lifestyle.

This means the QA team is under a microscope when it comes to releasing a Michelin star web application that works across a large selection of devices and browsers. Whether users are taking a cooking course, shopping for kitchenware, or watching one of the pros whip up a delicious dinner, America’s Test Kitchen strives to satisfy from the backend to the front of the house.

Join CrossBrowserTesting and America’s Test Kitchen QA Manager Megan Collins & QA Engineer Michael Ng as we go behind the counter to learn about what kind of testing is needed to keep up with a company that aims empower and impress millions of home cooks.

In this webinar, you’ll get a taste of:

  • What the America’s Test Kitchen QA strategy looks like
  • The incredible growth of the testing team and their shift to automation
  • How they use CrossBrowserTesting to serve up their cross-compatible web app on a silver platter

Save Your Seat

6 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Decide What Test Cases to Automate

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decide what test cases to automate

Even just the idea of test automation is enough to get the attention of most software teams. But while the idea of faster testing may seem like the silver bullet, there’s a time and place for automation.

Before you jump in head first, you should evaluate how automation is actually fitting into your organization. By asking these questions, you can get a better idea as to whether automation is the right move, or if you should take another route.

  1. What’s the risk involved? If you’ve performed a risk analysis of your application, you probably have a good idea of which test cases are the most important to check in each code change and which are a lower priority. Consider how human error could affect test data if it’s not automated. Think about how different test cases that may critically impact the customer and/or impact internal team downtime if broken. Additionally, you might want to automate high traffic page, features that depend on security, and problematic areas and other functions that rank high on your risk analysis.
  2. How often am I going to run this test again in the future? Running the same test more than once may seem repetitive and tedious, but if you’re not actually going to be running it frequently, it might not be worth it to automate. For example, if you know you’re going to have to test a feature two or three times but won’t be keeping it as a permanent part of the application or won’t be testing it after that, you might want to rethink automation. The tests you decide to automate should be a foundation of your regression testing strategy, so if you don’t feel like they’re a critical part of the application to be checked in every code change, it may be best to keep them separate.
  3. How much time am I willing to invest? When automation requires so much time and maintenance, you have to determine the ROI of your efforts. Some regression tests may seem like they’re a candidate for automation but upon closer inspection, might not be worth the energy for the value they’re providing. Automation is not a quick, one-and-done solution to your problems. Take a lesson from Elon Musk — you don’t want to drop automation into the mix without a second thought. Spend the time making sure your first test is checking all the boxes and meeting requirements. Then determine how often it will need to be updated or reevaluated in order to establish whether or not automation is worth your time investment.
  4. Are there parts of this test case that still need to be explored? You might think that you’re ready to automate, but keep in mind that automation comes after a thorough exploratory testing session. Just because you can automate doesn’t mean you should, and many tests are better off being performed manually. Are there still instances that could benefit from human observation? While you can’t expect to manually cover every part of the application, getting a foundation during exploratory testing is what leads to more successful, stable, and insightful automated tests.
  5. Does automating support the needs of my team? If you’re automating a test case, you want to make sure the tests you write are going to actually answer the questions your team is asking. First, take a hint from Bas Dijkstra, and discuss the “why” before firing up a test automation tool. While Selenium is a great tool for automation, understanding the nuances of the many commands and abilities of it can take some getting used to, so if you’re not able to write a script that encompasses all of the requirements your team is requesting, another method of testing may be better. If you still feel that you automation is the best process for the job but don’t feel confident in your Selenium skills, a tool like Record & Replay may help you achieve your testing goals. There are many choices when it comes to automated testing tools, so you need to make sure the one your organization uses will support the testing you’re trying to accomplish.
  6. Why are you automating? Sometimes the most simple questions can give you the most telling answers. If you’re automating because you think it’s what you should be doing or because your boss is telling you to, you might not be automating your tests for the right reasons. Your objective with test automation should be to provide insight to you your team and give faster feedback. If you have ulterior motives, your efforts won’t take you very far.

Conclusion

Even if you could automate every test, you would quickly find it’s not helping you or the rest of your team very much. Next time you’re deciding on whether or not to automate, ask the right questions first.

How Every Team Member Can Leverage a Test Automation Tool

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test automation tool

With the introduction of test automation tools such as CrossBrowserTesting, it’s easier than ever for teams to meet the demands of Agile, CI/CD, and DevOps. However, while testing used to be a job strictly for QA, software teams are finding that this no longer applies to their development process. As organizations continue to shift left, the lines continue to blur between different roles, and testers aren’t the only ones testing anymore.

If your entire team is ready to take on more testing, here’s a few ways each member can best leverage a test automation tool.

Digital Marketers – Think that your marketers have no use for testing? Think again. Anyone on your team that cares about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will likely be aware that mobile responsiveness is a factor when it comes to domain authority. In fact, Google has stated that responsive design is the recommended design pattern, which means that web applications that are optimized for mobile will actually show up higher in peoples’ search results. Your marketers may want to take advantage of a visual testing tool so that they can evaluate priority pages on different devices and screen sizes to determine whether or not they’re responsive. Ensuring mobile-friendliness will also benefit SEO by accelerating site speed, decreasing bounce rate, and boosting social sharing, making testing a marketer’s secret weapon.

Product Managers – Testing doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) wait until the end of the SDLC. In fact, it can take place as soon as the planning stage, especially when shifting left. Product Managers can expertly use the data of past test results to influence the direction of the product, but they can also perform their own testing to make immediate improvements and determine what changes should be made in the application next. By focusing on the usability of the application, product managers can perform exploratory tests to better understand what forms could be more intuitive or determine if the site is optimized for accessibility, for example. Additionally, product managers might find value in testing newer features recently implemented by the development team that impact usability (home page layout, checkout process, etc.) to make sure it fits into the buyer journey they way they intended.

Designers – If your designers have been manually testing your website to make sure it looks good across browsers and devices, that’s a good first step, but they shouldn’t stop there. Visual testing allows them to automatically capture screenshots of a URL on tens of browsers and compare them side-by-side. By picking a base browser, they can see where there are differences in each layout and decide which are acceptable and which need to be fixed. Whether an app is off by one pixel or a hundred, your designers can determine for themselves whether everything looks the way they want it to across configurations. It’s also important to make sure everything works in addition to looking exceptional, which is why Record & Replay helps test across the same browsers to make sure things like buttons, navigation, and link are all working as expected.

Developers – While we believe that every software development team should have it’s own dedicated QA team, that’s not to say that there are not certain times where developers should test their own code. It goes without saying that when a new feature is added, change is made, or bug is fixed the developer should ensure basic functionality of that new implementation after the code is adjusted by testing it. For longer test cases or more elaborate projects that restructure large areas of the application and require more extensive, end-to-end testing (such as you might see with a website rebrand), developers might want to also run one-off tests without taking up too much time. By leveraging prior programming knowledge to learn Selenium commands, developers can ensure functionality without spending hours on testing. Instead of manually executing a basic test case, they could write an automation script in a fraction of the time and still cover large areas of code to check whether it passes or fails.

Manual Testers – Manual testing will always be a crucial part of QA because it depends on the curiosity, observation, and skill of the individual to execute tests that will provide insight to the rest of the test. However, while exploratory tests can be the best part of the job, manual regression tests can be the bane of their existence. Despite the name of the role, manual testers no longer have to be confined to strictly manual testing. With test automation tools like Record & Replay, manual testers can automate the tedious, boring, and repetitive testing that they’ve come to dread without having to learn a programming language or getting up to speed with complex testing frameworks.

Automation Engineers – For the tester that’s mastered Selenium and has too many UI tests to count, how can they speed up testing to take it from days to hours? Parallel testing is the key to making your automation time even faster. By simultaneously testing in multiple browser configurations at once instead of one after another, parallel testing allows you to take your suite and divide the time spent running tests. Just by running a test in two browsers at once, you’re already cutting your automation time in half because you’d be testing them all at the same point in time. You can see where this would really pay off as you continue to add more tests, create longer suites, and run them on more browsers.

Conclusion

When everyone in the SDLC is moving fast to implement and deliver new features, testing is no longer a one-man job. In order for other team members to meet their deadlines, they must also be held accountable for some of their own testing.

While we can never replace the important work of our QA teams, there are tools that can help ensure that everyone plays a part in ensuring speed and quality from planning to deployment.

From Bad to Brutal: Performing a Risk Analysis of Your Web Application

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risk analysis in software testing

Test automation is great, but even with the ability to cover more parts of your application in less time, testing everything is impossible. This is why you have to perform a risk analysis of your web application in order to decide when certain test cases get performed and how often.

There are many levels to creating a risk analysis, and deciding which tests go to the top level depends on largely on your business needs and the state of your application. However, these five considerations will give you a good place to start when trying to decide your most important tests.

  1. Most Popular and Problematic Browsers – Take a look at Google Analytics or Mixpanel to see which browsers, operating systems, and devices are being used most often to access your web page. The number of configurations you include in your testing will depend on how fragmented your user base is. You want to ensure basic functionality for at least 80 percent of your users, so if 80 percent are between five browsers, you can get away with including those five in your first tier of testing. However, if it’s split between ten configurations, you’ll want to allow more time for cross-browser testing. If you do find browser use is highly fragmented, parallel testing is a good way to check off your boxes in multiple configurations at once. But we’re talking about risk here, so you also want to think about which configurations cause the most problems for you. IE 8 always breaking? Make sure to include it in your first tier.
  2. Most Critical Unit and Integration Tests – Which tests will have the biggest impact on your bottom line if broken? For example, if you’re running an e-commerce website, the ability to enter payment details and submit them for processing is clearly important for allowing users to make a purchase. If they aren’t able to make a purchase and the application fails when they try to submit this information, they won’t be giving you their business and will probably go to a competitor. On the other hand, this will be different if you’re working in healthcare, finance, or government, for example. Identify the unit and integration tests that make up the foundation of your business as well as your application and associated risk on a scale from minimal to critical in order to determine which place at the top of your risk analysis.
  3. Most Common Landing Pages – Ask any marketer — a big part of the success of any web application is a user’s first interaction with it. This means that you should be looking at the pages with the heaviest traffic to determine which should be tested most often in regression. Choose five to ten pages that users land on most often. Whether that includes the homepage, pricing page, or the “about us” page, you want to make sure these are consistently up to par with a healthy mix of functional testing and visual testing. Additionally, tools like CrazyEgg will actually show you where on the page users click the most so you can narrow down the most important features and areas of your application.
  4. Security and Privacy – Ensuring security in any instances where personal information is being requested from your users should be of top importance in your risk analysis. Take note of any times where payment is being received, passwords are being entered, contact information is input, or confidential information is requested. In addition, any part of the application that may have an impact on the safety or financial status of your users should always be a priority to ensure that their data is uncompromised. Just ask the companies that have been victim to some of the worst software bugs in history — once you lose user trust, it’s hard to get it back.
  5. Extended Downtime – Which functionalities will take the longest for your team to get up and running again? While your users should usually be your first priority, sometimes risk goes beyond their inconveniences when it puts the entire team on a backlog. If you already know it’s not going to be an easy fix that could affect the application downtime for days and team productivity for weeks, it should probably be high on your list when thinking of risk. Where have you had issues in the past? History repeats itself in life and your application. Log and report areas that have a high probability of failure so you can prepare your team and avoid excessive repair time.

You have to be familiar with the risk associated with different functions and features in an application to know what should be tested first, what should be tested again, and what you can deprioritize.

While you can never guarantee that code will be deployed with zero bugs, you can develop a strategy to ensure that any issues that do slip through the cracks won’t be detrimental to your application.

7 Reasons Your Testing Team Will Love Record & Replay

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Imagine there was a way to have your manual tests recorded so you could easily replay them on hundreds of browsers without needing to perform the same exact actions over and over again. Record & Replay does just that, allowing you to test once and play it back on the largest selection of browsers in the cloud.

This may seem too good to be true, but many testers have already experienced the power of a codeless automated testing tool. If you’re still a little lost, we’ll make it easy for you. Here’s exactly why you should be excited about Record & Replay:

  1. No coding knowledge needed – Have you been wanting to experience the speed of test automation but having trouble getting started with Selenium? If you don’t know how to code, you have a long way to go from learning a programming language to writing your first working script. Luckily, with Record & Replay, no coding knowledge is needed. Rather than writing script, all you have to do is perform them and CrossBrowserTesting will record the actions. If you’re struggling with complicated frameworks and commands to create a successful Selenium test, Record & Replay is a hassle-free way to automate with the skills you already possess.
  2. Ability to edit tests – What happens when you perform the wrong action in Record & Replay or want to change part of a test? No need to stress, all you have to do is go back and edit recorded scripts. Delete mistakes with one click, or go in and edit your script by clicking on the script name and “Edit Steps”. There, you’ll see all the recorded values for each step variable, and once you’ve made your adjustments, all you have to do is save it to put your changes into action. Whether it be a typo or missed step, there’s no reason to spend valuable time redoing an entire test when all you need to do is fix one part of it.
  3. Unbeatable browser selection – There’s no question — CrossBrowserTesting offers Record & Replay on the widest selection of browsers. In fact, most of our competitors aren’t doing it at all. But we aren’t here to brag, we just think that a test is only as valuable as the number of browser configurations it can be run on. That’s why it makes sense that Record & Replay users have access to our numerous configurations, which means whether you want to test IE 8 or the newest Chrome release, you have the resources to check cross-browser functionality where and when you need to.
  4. Parallel testing capabilities – What’s better than automating one test at a time? How about automating ten in parallel? With Record & Replay, it takes seconds to select your test suites and play them back at the same time against different browsers. Parallel testing gives you time back to focus on exploratory test and untouched code in your application. Stop running test after test in different browsers, and start running them all at once to make time for the tests you haven’t run yet.
  5. Access to recording tools – Since tests are recorded as a script, sometimes you may want to insert certain commands that you can’t do manually to get the results you want. For example, if you want to verify element properties to keep visual consistencies across different browsers, you might need extra capabilities to allow you to do that. The tools included in Record & Replay allow you to add quick commands such as expects, sleeps, and hovers to make sure you’re making the most of your tests.
  6. Start shifting left – Software development teams aren’t shifting left because it’s the cool thing to do, it’s actually just a really good way to make sure quality is accounted for earlier. Test automation has been a big part of the shift left movement, allowing teams to test faster and thus earlier and more often. For teams that haven’t yet made the shift or who are just getting starting with automated testing, Record & Replay provides an on-ramp to automation, and sharing capabilities through Slack and Jira means encourages open communication with your entire team so you can get testing involved sooner in the software development lifecycle.
  7. Testing for all – As the roles in the software development lifecycle begin to overlap and blur, testing isn’t just for testers anymore. While we do believe that organizations should depend on a dedicated QA team, there is more room for other software stakeholders to take part in some small testing tasks as well. Previously, the ability to automate was only available to automation engineers or testers with programming knowledge. Now anyone can test from developers and product managers to marketers and designers can take part, so your entire team can run like a well-oiled machine.

Conclusion

If your QA team is still playing a game of catch up to a development team that’s continuously integrating new code, it’s time to get on board with an automated testing tool.

Trying to understand automation can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Record & Replay can help you take the first steps to faster testing and increased code coverage to support your team from planning to deployment.

The 5 Ways Parallel Testing Can Instantly Improve Your Workflow

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benefits parallel testing

You’ve probably heard of parallel testing before, but the ability to multiply your testing power without multiplying your testing time seems something of a QA fantasy if you haven’t tried it yet. But once you experience parallel testing, you’ll never want to go back to life before it.

While there are probably hundreds of benefits from parallel testing, everyone will gain the value in different ways. In case you need to be convinced (or you need to convince your boss), we rounded up the top five advantages you can expect from parallel testing.

  1. More Browser Coverage – Take one test, run it across multiple browsers at once — that’s the beauty of parallel testing. If you’ve been running tests on different browsers one after the other, or even just skipping browser testing all together, you’ll realize how valuable parallel testing is after your first time trying it. Instead of only testing on one or two browsers, you can substantially increase your cross-browser coverage with parallel testing, hitting configurations you didn’t even realize were an issue. Plus, with CrossBrowserTesting’s broad selection of browsers, operating systems, and devices, you have seemingly endless options for checking the functionality for any and every user.
  2. Less Manual Testing – We’re not saying manual testing is a bad thing — in fact, it’s a pillar of a successful testing strategy. However, when you’re manually performing the same regression tests over and over on different browsers, you’re not making the most of your time. Not only is this boring, tedious work, you’re also risking human error and inaccurate test data by trying to repeat the same tests. Parallel testing allows you to repeat these tests in regression without worrying about skipping a step so you can be confident you’re reaching all the right parts of your application.
  3. Saves Valuable Time – Besides increasing test coverage, parallel also decreases the amount of time you’re actually spending on each test. Since you’re running multiple tests at the same time, rather than one after the other, you’re testing gets done in the fraction of the time it normally takes. In fact, just running 2 tests in parallel doubles your speed, and the more you run in parallel, the more time you save that can be spent elsewhere. This means you can redirect that energy to go back to performing the exploratory tests and looking at new parts of your application at while still meeting your deadlines.
  4. Improving the Development Workflow – Not only does parallel testing make your job easier, it allows for better communication between departments and improves the productivity of your entire team. By allowing for faster feedback and better reporting, parallel testing equips you with the ability to relay results from testing back to your team earlier in the development cycle. This means that parallel testing will be useful in your organization’s effort to shift left and implement Continuous Integration and Delivery practices that will get iterations to market faster and with fewer bugs.
  5. Go Scriptless – With CrossBrowserTesting, you now have even more ways to run your tests in parallel. With our Selenium grid, you can use your Selenium skills to write tests and run them in parallel. With Record & Replay, you can also achieve parallel testing with zero coding knowledge needed by executing a test manually then rerunning your suites across the browsers your choose. This means teams who are both new to automation and experienced in Selenium can benefit from the capabilities of parallel testing.

We could talk all day about how amazing parallel testing is, but don’t take our word for it. Whether you’ve automated 100 tests or 1, you can easily start running tests in parallel now to experience more code coverage with less time spent on manual regressions.

Try your hand at running a test in two browsers at once then take it to the next level by adding more, and witness pure testing magic right before your eyes.

Record and Replay Testing vs. Scripting: Which is Right for You?

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record and playback testing
With so many tools on the market claiming to help you automate your tests, what do you choose? Between Selenium and record and replay testing, it can get a little confusing trying to differentiate and pick the best one for the job.

When it comes down to it, the most effective way to determine which path is better is to understand what the differences are and what you and your team need in a testing tool. All test automation tools have certain strengths; once you know how to leverage them, the answer becomes clear.

What is Record and Replay Testing?

Record and Replay, otherwise known as codeless automation, is a way to run tests without programming knowledge. This is done using a tool, like CrossBrowserTesting, that allows you to manually perform actions in the browser and save them as a test. You can then take this test and rerun it with a click, making regression and browser testing infinitely faster.

This means that manual testers or testers that are still new to Selenium can easily create automated tests. In addition, this allows other roles such as product managers, developers, designers, and even marketers participate in testing without having to learn an entirely new tool.

Record and Replay is the lightweight solution for test automation. The value is the most prominent for teams that are still transitioning from mostly manual testing to include some automation in order to speed up testing and help integrate it earlier in the software development lifecycle.

While Record and Replay may not be the ideal solution for teams who are well-versed in the intricacies of Selenium and who have lofty goals for code coverage on a multi-faceted web application, it is a great way to get started with automation.

Record and Replay is good for:

  • Individuals with little or no programming knowledge
  • Filling in the gaps of Selenium tests and transitioning from mostly manual testing
  • Lightweight automation for smaller tests
  • Non-technical roles doing one-off tests
  • Teams where members outside of QA take part in some testing

What’s Scripting?

Scripting is what you might traditionally think with test automation — writing a test using Selenium commands and coding knowledge. In order to do this, you do need to have a foundational understanding of at least one programming language as well as what makes up a Selenium script and Selenium commands.

As teams focus on shifting left to incorporate testing earlier and integrate more often, Selenium should eventually be a part of this strategy. However, while Selenium is an invaluable tool for testing, it does have a steep learning curve. Scripting is a great option if there are existing team members that know how to write them, but you might want to seek out an alternative if not.

Fortunately, there are plenty of resources for learning Selenium because anyone who uses Selenium will tell you how it’s worth it. If your team knows how to leverage frameworks, maintain tests, and create stable scripts that provide insight for your team, you’ve probably already witnessed how valuable Selenium is. Additionally, you can multiply the effectiveness of your tests by leveraging cloud tools like CrossBrowserTesting to extend your browser library and capabilities.

Selenium is good for:

  • Highly technical practitioners that know the ins and outs of writing a Selenium script
  • Enterprise teams with an experienced QA team, expansive web applications, and a high volume of users
  • Creating robust suites and end-to-end tests
  • The largest reach in terms of automation speed and code coverage

Automation for Everyone

While Record & Replay and Selenium have different uses, they do share features in CrossBrowserTesting that will benefit anyone.

A stand-out detail is the ability to test on one of the largest browser selections in the cloud. This means that whether you’re a seasoned automation engineer or first-time tester, you can run a single test across an enormous array of browsers.

Additionally, you also have the ability to test in parallel. We can’t say it enough, parallel testing is one of the best ways to effortlessly accelerate the speed and coverage of your testing.

Once your tests are saved in Record & Replay, you can run up to 10 scripts in parallel across dozens of browsers with a few clicks. With Selenium, you use multithreading, which you can read more about in this blog about running your Selenium test in two browsers at once.

But what if you’re still having troubling choosing? What if some people on your team are automation novices, while others are Selenium professionals? With CrossBrowserTesting, you don’t have to choose. We have both Record & Replay and a Selenium grid, which means that every organization, every team, and every tester can discover the best way to achieve their automation goals.

The Top Resources Around the Web For Learning Selenium WebDriver

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If you’ve found that manual testing just isn’t cutting it anymore, your first instinct might be to learn Selenium online in attempts to catch up with test automation.

Learning by yourself is a tall task, but it has been done before. Luckily, since so many people have gone through the same thing, there are plenty of resources for learning Selenium — you just have to know where to look. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the highest rated and most popular tutorials, videos, and websites to help you get on the right track to test automation.

Free Tutorials

  • Guru 99 Free Selenium Tutorials – Guru 99 is a go-to source for testers, and their Selenium tutorials do not disappoint. In an effort to turn to from a beginner to a Selenium automation pro, these sequential tutorials cover everything. Even if you don’t follow the order, the Selenium tutorials is a great page to bookmark and go back to if you get stuck.
  • Selenium Easy – Selenium Easy offers automation testing tutorials with working step-by-step examples to help you through the fundamentals on to more advanced concepts. They even have a demo site full of basic examples to get you practicing with Selenium off the bat.
  • Selenium WebDriver Training with Java Basics – Udemy offers an abundance of courses to learn Selenium. Some of the more extensive classes can get pricey, but this free class is a great option to get started and learn the basics. The course is highly rated and reviewed and promises to train you to automate any web-based application with Selenium by the end, even teaching Java from scratch.
  • Richard Bradshaw’s Free Selenium WebDriver Course – Richard Bradshaw a.k.a. The Friendly Tester is no stranger to the bustling test community. One of his biggest claims to fame besides being the Ministry of Testing BossBoss is his Free Selenium Webdriver course. Covering drivers, navigation, locators, interactions, and much more, the text and code is supplemented by videos on The Dojo to help you get better acquainted with Selenium.
  • Selenium Tutorial – Tools QA has a Selenium Tutorial for learning the basics in Java. This is for anyone who’s brand new to automation since it goes through learning Java and setting up Selenium, but there are guides for everything. You can move on to learn more advanced Java actions and more complex Selenium commands, plus there’s plenty of information about frameworks and even Continuous Integration.
  • Software Testing Help – Software Testing Help is another great support system for testers trying to make the transition to automation, and these tutorials start from basic concepts through advanced topics like framework creation, Selenium Grid, and Cucumber BDD. As you make your way through these tutorials, you’ll find that writing an automated script is much more manageable than you previously thought.
  • Selenium 101 Series – Our comprehensive Selenium 101 Series gives you the tools you need to succeed with test automation. By tackling the most common Selenium challenges, CrossBrowserTesting provides a convenient and digestible resource for polishing your skills, including features like our interactive Selenium anatomy, knowledge quiz, and test automation ebooks.

Paid Tutorials

  • Selenium 2 WebDriver Basics With Java – Alan Richardson is another tester whose name you’ll see often. This paid course is an in-depth look at Selenium WebDriver and its usage patterns and aims to increase your ability to write effective automation code. Alan’s extensive experience makes him a great teacher, making this is a popular course that always receives rave reviews.
  • Automated Web Testing with Selenium – Pluralsight hosts this intermediate course to help you level up your Selenium skills by helping you use C# to automate browsers with the Selenium API and distribute tests with Selenium Grid. The course also highlights the implementation of a simple framework to use with Selenium to make tests more maintainable. Pluralsight offers other courses in addition, which means you can keep building your skills after you’re done.
  • Complete Selenium WebDriver with C# – Build a Framework – Nikolay Advolodkin is very talented when it comes to Selenium, which means that this course is a no-brainer for anyone who wants to improve their tests by building their own framework. As the #1 Selenium instructor in the world, following his footsteps will put you on the road to the master class.
  • Selenium Academy – CrossBrowserTesting – This course shows you how to use our Selenium grid for your tests including how to run tests on mobile devices. While you do need some prior knowledge, it’s a great resource for getting started with a robust cloud testing tool like CrossBrowserTesting. In addition, Selenium Academy has an entire course catalog in your preferred programming language covering everything automation.

Other Resources

  • Selenium HQ – If you want the most accurate information, go straight to the source. Selenium HQ has all kinds of helpful documents to help you get up and running.
  • Ultimate QA – In addition to Selenium tutorials, Nikolay also regularly blogs and publishes lots of informative resources for familiarizing yourself with Selenium.
  • The Automated Tester – Another blogger, David Burns knows how to talk automated testing. He’s constantly publishing great content and even has some Selenium training available.
  • Selenium Conference – There’s no better way to learn from the experiences of people that actually use Selenium than by going to an in person conference. Selenium Conference is the place to be if you want to break into test automation.
  • Twitter – Many people have been in your shoes before, and even the most skilled automation engineers had to start somewhere. The good news for you is that most of them are very active on Twitter and are constantly sharing their tips, tricks, and advice when it comes to test automation, so be sure to check them out and give them a follow.
  • Stack Overflow – Got questions? Here’s where you come for answers when you hit a bump in the road. Stack Overflow is where over 50 million developers and testers go to share their knowledge, so you know there will be someone to help out with any kind of problem you run into, no matter how small, specific, or simple it may seem.

Testing is an active industry, and the community is constantly talking about ways to automate more effectively. Fortunately, this means you have many resources at your disposal to learn Selenium. This list includes some of our favorite content but just skims the top of everything that’s out there. Take the time to talk to other testers and see what worked for them, practice often, and you’ll be writing your own tests before you know it.

Ease Your Transition to Test Automation with New Record & Replay

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crossbrowsertesting record and replay
All the talk about test automation can be a little overwhelming. It seems like everyone is doing it, and in theory, it sounds great — who doesn’t want to release software faster and with fewer bugs?

In practice, though, you’ve probably experienced that making test automation a part of your organization’s day-to-day workflows is another story. Learning Selenium is challenging and getting everyone on board isn’t as easy as you hoped.

Additionally, with faster iterations and release cycles, your QA team isn’t the only one who needs to run tests. In addition to testers; product managers, developers, designers, and even digital marketers are all looking for an immediate means to test their progress.

The fact is we’re all still adjusting to the environment of test automation, and everyone’s at different stages. Unfortunately, hopping on the Selenium bandwagon isn’t as easy as picking a programming language and pumping out a fully-functional and stable script.

So, how do you accomplish your automation goals without being able to write an end-to-end Selenium suite? CrossBrowserTesting now gives everyone on your team the ability to fill in the gaps of their test coverage with Record & Replay.

What’s Record & Replay?

Record & Replay is the newest feature in the CrossBrowserTesting toolkit.

While you’ve had the ability to test over 1,500 real desktop and mobile browsers with Live Testing or through our screenshot comparison engine with no coding knowledge needed, you may have experienced a disconnect in the jump to automation.

This revolves around the fact that you cannot use our Selenium grid without knowing how to work Selenium, and thus knowing how to code. Without the ability to use this feature, it can be a race against the clock to test your application in all the browsers you need before your deadline hits.

Getting started with Record & Replay, on the other hand, is accessible for testers of all skill levels. By simply typing in your URL and manually performing the actions you want to automate, CrossBrowserTesting will save them as a test. You can then take your recorded test and play it back on an unbeatable selection of browser and operating system configurations, just like you would with Selenium.

All your work is saved in the CrossBrowserTesting cloud so you can go back and run tests over or keep building out your suite. And don’t worry – if you skipped a step or need to make an adjustment, Record & Replay allows you to go back and edit your tests so you don’t have to redo each and every action you already performed.

Once you’ve made a suite of tests, you can use Record & Replay to take up to 10 pre-recorded scripts and run them in parallel, which means you can test against multiple configurations simultaneously. This is great for bulk regressions testing, and you can use the Run History section to monitor your tests.

When running just two tests in parallel doubles the speed and coverage of your testing, leveraging this feature is a no-brainer for teams that are aiming for a faster time to market without knowing how to write a test script.

Start Automating Today

As teams continue to shift left and integrate more testing throughout the software development lifecycle, it requires the effort of all stakeholders to be able to test areas of your application whenever they need. Now everyone on your team can quickly create automated tests that get the job done.

We all know manual testing can be a drag — who has time to run the same test over and over? Wouldn’t it be better to have your entire team on the same page, taking on their tasks with a single tool? Having CrossBrowserTesting’s comprehensive Live, Visual, Automated, and now Record & Replay capabilities means your entire team can leverage our robust device lab to meet each of their individual needs in a way that makes the most sense for them.

Record and replay tools take the guesswork out of automation, and now with CrossBrowserTesting, you can use our version of Record & Replay to take the complexity out of recording manual tests and replaying them across browsers. Automation just became much more accessible to your entire team.

To learn more, take a look at what you can do with Record & Replay capabilities in the video below.

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