Selenium is one of the most popular and widely-used browser automation tool. It has enjoyed a loyal user base and a great amount of attention ever since its inception in 2004.Till date Selenium 3 is the latest Selenium tool or version available in the market. However plans for Selenium 4 has been done, this is alpha version only which may not be stable.Selenium is not just a single tool but a suite of software, each with a different approach to support automation testing. It comprises of four major components which include:

Selenium Feature Summary

Selenium enables easy development of adorned automated scripts. The detailed features available in selenium can be chosen according to the level of complexity that is associated with the testing task.Its user-friendly interface makes it convenient for creation of exploratory tests, unit tests, one-off bug reproduction reports and a whole lot more.

Why Selenium Is Popular?

 There are no doubts about the fact that Selenium is popular.It is one of the best browser automation tool.It is a free automation tool.According to research ,41,366 companies are using Selenium.Some of the popular users includes Google and Facebook!.A very simple reason behind selenium popularity is that it lays an easy path for generating test scripts, functionality validation, and assists in reusing test scripts in automated testing frameworks. Although it demands technical knowledge on the part of the tester as well as knowledge about using third-party tools, it still has been very user friendly.

Selenium is open source software. has no upfront, out-of-pocket costs. You can simply go to the official website and download it free of cost. As if that were not enough, the support for the tool also comes absolutely free from a wide community of users.Similarly selenium supports many programming languages.Selenium supports recording scripts being run in the browser under test run mode. All the test scripts created are saved in a very simple fashion without any attributes.Yet another feature that illustrates the robustness of Selenium is that the tests can be run under multiple browsers without any major restrictions.Selenium is quite a cooperative tool when it comes to coupling with other third-party tools or software.You can also use Selenium on other cloud-based online grids like LambdaTest. 

The most notable business advantages of selenium are its periodic implementation with the least amount of human effort while maintaining high levels of accuracy.Some other advantages are:

• Faster Feedback
• Reduced Business Expenses
• Accelerated Results
• Testing Efficiency Improvement
• Re usability of Automated Tests
• Earlier Detection of Defects
• Faster Time-to-Market
• Information Security

There are some limitations of using selenium. Integration with different third-party tools are required such as

• TestNG and JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports.
• Jenkins, Maven, and Docker to achieve continuous testing.
• Sikuli for image based testing.

Since selenium requires scripting.It needs testers to have a certain understanding of programming.You can use it with Java, C#, PHP, RoR, Perl, and all major languages.

For a lot of users, Selenium is actually the best browser automation tool out there. However, for some users, that may not be the case. However, with changing trends and further developments in the software industry, a lot of competitors of the tool were invented and this forces us to pose a serious question: is Selenium still the best browser automation tool?

Since Selenium is such a diverse testing package, enterprises the world over have begun using this tool for testing software applications varying from the simple to the highly complex. Right from its open source nature to its cross-platform compatibility, everything in this testing suite offer organizations the best of the best when it comes to testing automation.