Selenium Automation framework history

 Today we will see how selenium came in to IT industry and become one of the popular automation testing tool.

One of the interesting story born in 2004, when an a engineer in Thoughtworks testing a web application manually. While testing he found repetition of manual actions on the web application. The name of engineer who found selenium is Jason Huggins.

   

Jason Huggins developed on JavaScript program that helps to control browser actions, Initially he named this program as a JavascriptTestRunner. This program helps him to save his time and then he thought there more potential in this idea to help other web applications to automate. Jason Huggins made JavascriptTestRunner as open source which was renamed later as Selenium-core. But question may came in your mind why he given selenium name to this. there again very interesting story.

 Why name is selenium?

               In that era, another popular automation tool was developed by Mercury interactive (later acquired by HPE), it says that Jason Huggins told his teammates, Selenium would-be well-known antidote for the Mercury poisoning.  So he suggested the selenium name.

 As you know selenium is collections of different tools so it had been contributed by many developers. In web application java script program has been used. so same origin policy prohibits Javascript code to accessing elements from other domain. This is the reason that Test teams had to install local copies of the both selenium core and the web server which containing the web application under test so it will be a in same domain. To overcome this problem selenium core development is started. 

Selenium RC -: Another legend Paul Hammant from ThoughtWorks contributed in selenium core. Test teams had to install selenium core and web server locally, to resolve this restriction Paul Hammant has developed server that will be acted as an HTTP proxy so application under test and web server will in same domain. This program named selenium Remote control (RC), it also known as Selenium 1.

 

Selenium Grid-: Selenium Grid was developed by Patrick Lightbody to minimize test execution time as much as possible. Patrick Lightbody initially called that program as Hosted QA, it was capable of capture the browser screen snaps and send to the selenium commands to different machines at same time.

 Selenium IDE-: Shinya Kasatani developed selenium IDE to increase the script development speed. He had developed firefox extension to automate using record and playback features. He donated this extension to the selenium community and now it is named as selenium IDE.

 Selenium webdriver-:  Selenium grown up well! Now another legend from Thoughtworks Simon Stewart developed another tool called Webdriver, it has feature that not available in selenium. In 2011 both projects were merged.

               Selenium webdriver is a first cross platform testing framework that control the browser from OS level.

 Selenium 2-: In 2008 selenium team decided to merge selenium RC and selenium webdriver to make it more powerful tool called selenium 2.

 Recently selenium 3 is released with some more updates, the selenium core part is removed from selenium 3, user can implement their own webdriver so they can better testing experience.

 Now a days Selenium is become more popular and robust automation solution for web applications.

 Hope you enjoyed the reading; we will see complete selenium tutorials in upcoming articles… stay tuned 😊