Selenium IDE

SeleniumIDE is a test automation support tool. Install it by downloading the browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, or both. It is NOT the same as SeleniumWebdriver, the utility that facilitates automated testing. It:

• Allows you to record and play back interactions performed during manual test cases with a web browser.
• Automatically generates action commands (in a language called Selenese) to describe those tests.
• Helps you find issues with web element locators (e.g. xpaths)
• Can be used to generate test automation code from the Selenese action commands.

Although SeleniumIDE is a great rapid prototyping tool for test development, the automated tests it writes are less efficient (ie. there is lots of duplication of code, which can lead to brittleness). In addition, tests run with SeleniumIDE are comparatively slow and the solution does not scale with system complexity.

You SHOULD use SeleniumIDE to automate test cases when:

• The tests you need to automate are simple.
• The tests don't require switching between windows.
• The web app doesn't change frequently.
• You only need to make sure your web app works on Firefox and Chrome (the two browsers that have a SeleniumIDE plugin).
• You need rapid prototyping or quick automated SmokeTests.
• The client has a limited budget or no programmers to maintain the tests.
• You need to record outcomes from your manual tests for recordkeeping (e.g. for ISO 9000 records retention).

You SHOULD NOT use SeleniumIDE to automate test cases if:

• You need the tests to run fast.
• Your tests have dependencies, or need to be run conditionally.
• There are many test scenarios that need to be run with different combinations of input Examples(like in Gherkin/Cucumber ScenarioOutline).
• You need to deal with exception handling.

-- NicoleRadziwill - 16 Apr 2020