My good old college friend who did Engineering with me and got placed in top MNC soon after his graduation as a software tester called me few months back to get my advice on how to get a career growth. He had been working as a Manual Tester for 4 long years and when he realized that all his counterparts have secretly trained from some institutes and got placed in top-notch companies with terrific salary package, he started feeling insecure.
Mostly the scene gets repeated in a testers life atleast once. That’s when a software tester thinks to upskill himself either because he plans a career switch or plans to upskill for his project needs. For my friend who was worried and wanted to get into automation quickly – the best tool in market that I suggested him was Selenium. There are so many automation tools available in the market like UFT, Watir, FitNesse, SoapUI etc. but Selenium is the first preference of many software developers and testers and biggies like Google and Facebook too use it. The reason is very simple – you get to use it for free and it works with any OS. Apart from this reason Selenium comes with lot of additional pluses – let’s explore it below.
The First and main reason for selenium popularity is – Selenium is an open source tool – that means you need not pay to use it. You just need to go to the official website to download it for free and then start using it. Also, the other good thing is support for this tool is free too from an extensive set of consumers. This community involvement also applies to getting help for problems. Rather than purchasing maintenance contracts and submitting a support ticket, you can go to any of a number of forums, or even straight to the developers if you choose.
Selenium has a quality to support several programming languages. Selenium is very strong when it comes to language support and can support languages like Python, Pearl, Ruby, PHP, .NET (C#) and Java.etc
Using selenium is easy. Once you set it up – generating test scripts to reusing the same in an automated testing framework becomes easy. But definitely you need proper selenium training and skillset to use this tool. With good practical knowledge and hands-on training only, you can master Selenium. You do not require in-depth programming knowledge. Having basic programming knowledge is more than enough. Also selenium supports testing on various platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, Android andiOS.
The best way to find out why Selenium takes the cake when compared to other automation tools can be simply made clear by the below table:
| Comparation of Five Top Automation Testing Tools | ||||
| Tools | Released on | Free/Licensed | Language | Operating Systems |
| Selenium | 2004 | Free | C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python & Ruby | Windows, Linux,OS X |
| UFT | 1998 | Licensed | Only VB Script | Windows |
| Watir | 2008 | Free | Only Ruby | Windows, Linux,OS X |
| TestComplete | 1999 | Licensed | C++, C#, Delphi, JavaScript, Jscript, Python & VBScript | Windows |
| KatalonStudio | 2015 | Free | Groovy/Java | Windows, Linux,OS X |
With its fantastic features Selenium tool helps as a main tool for browser compatibility testing and also functional testing. Selenium has set of tools like Selenium Grid which allows a tester to run tests on separate machines against separate browsers in parallel. It also fast tracks test cycle by influencing the development code.
End of the story is my friend whom I suggested selenium training in Chennai for Automation – that’s TestLeaf and now he is placed in a prominent Company and the best part is with 100% hike. Wherever you plan to skill up yourself check out whether they provide you practical training with real time set ups. Project oriented training from real time working professionals will help you compete in the market with confidence. Competition in the automation market is tough but with right training and skillset your success has not boundaries. Go get your dreams…Wish you luck!!
