If you want to kick-start your career in the IT field or if you want to grow from being a manual tester to an automation tester, you have to learn selenium. This is because automation testing has taken the world by storm and many industries are looking for selenium certified and well-qualified professionals. If you learn selenium you will get more chances to work on live projects and also increase your knowledge and hand experience. But before learning a selenium course make sure you know what selenium testing tool is all about and understand why it is necessary for you.
What is selenium?
Selenium testing tool is an open-source testing tool which helps to validate the web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is designed in a manner which is capable of automating the browsers with specific browsers that are built-in for automating web applications. As it is an open-source tool you need not pay for using it at the same time you can experience more benefit by using the tool. Once you have done with the selenium course you will have multiple opportunities in the field of mobile testing, big data and API testing.
When it is with the selenium testing software, it is not a single tool. Each piece in the selenium testing tool will be used to satisfy different testing needs of an organization. Here is a list of tools that are associated with the selenium software,
- Selenium integrated development environment (IDE)
- Selenium remote control (RC)
- Web driver
- Selenium grid
Reasons why you should learn selenium
It might take a while if you start counting the pros of learning and using selenium. Here are a few reasons that justify why you should learn selenium
- Open free tool
As it is said earlier selenium is an open-source tool. That means that anybody can use it. Any organization can use this tool for the testing purpose. With selenium tools, they can test their website or web application and even the independent programmers can learn testing with the selenium tool. There are even other tools that you could use, but their functionality is not as good as selenium.
- No special OS/ browser/hardware demands
There is another benefit that you get from the selenium tool. There is no special OS or browser or hardware required for the selenium software tool. The OS that you use for the home purpose is good enough for selenium testing.
- Availability of frameworks
Frameworks are somewhat the same to that of the templates. You can make slight modifications to the code as per your need for different conditions, instead of making whole changes. There are various frameworks.
- Easy integration with the other tools
The selenium tool can be easily integrated with the other open-source tools. When many tools are integrated with selenium you can achieve more on automation.
- No dependency on GUI based systems
The selenium tests can be executed without a GUI. It can be carried out on web servers. The automation can be achieved by scheduling the execution by integrating it with the other tools. Without GUI, the performances of your machines will drastically improve.
- Parallel and distributed testing
With the selenium tool, multiple selenium tests can be executed in parallel on the same machine or even on remote machines. When it is with the remote machines, the selenium grid is used for executing the test cases. By performing the parallel and distributed testing you can save more time to run the tests and can execute the tests in the same machine. If you are not willing to set the selenium grids then you can use the selenium grids that are available online. With this, you can run your tests and truly automate cross-browser testing.
- Multiple programming language support
This has to be the most important factor for the one who wants to get into the automation testing domain. With selenium, you will not have too many restrictions and this tool is also like the other tools. With the tools in the market, you have to be specialized in one particular programming language. But with selenium, you can start your career even if you are skilled in any one of the programming languages like java, python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, C# and .Net.
Selenium using python
Python is very simple and easy to learn. It is also free and open-source which has many built-in testing frameworks that cover debugging and fastest workflows. When you are using python in selenium it works pretty well. Most of the companies are also switching to selenium with python due to its easy syntax and a lot of available libraries. Selenium with python is a good choice because of the following reasons,
- Easy coding and readability
- More productivity
- Widely adopted language
- Dynamically typed language
Therefore if you are good and comfortable with python language then you can learn selenium with python, otherwise, you can choose any other programming language.
Selenium using java
On the other hand, you can learn selenium with java. Java is also a powerful and established programming language and it is widely popular across the globe. It has a bright future despite its existence for years.
Why selenium with java?
- The users for selenium with java is more
- There is long community support for java
- Selenium is developed using java
- 80% o the selenium testers use java binding
- Execution is faster
With selenium, there is no ideal language to use. You can use both Java and python and they have something unique to offer. So if you are very concerned about which language should be selected with selenium? The answer is very simple. You can choose any programming language in which you are good and it also depends upon various factors like teams situation, the language that is used in the organization level, local support, user-friendliness and above all the comfort level.
Therefore, if you want to start a career in testing you can choose and learn selenium because it is the right track to get started. Take the best selenium training either with python or java and obtain a vast knowledge and experience with hands-on training.