Selenium - where i can start?

[Enock Prince]

Tarun,

Thanks for your efforts and time, am a QTP engineer over than 5 years. Now i would like to study Selenium, the reason behind this, i believe QTP losing its market share slowly and Selenium growing rapidly.

OK, lets come to the picture, i expect some practical suggestions from you, which technology i can learn?

Selenium RC
or
Selenium Webdriver

Which one most of the companies are using?
If you are suggesting RC, then which language we can choose?
If Webdriver, JS will do everything? or do i need to learn any other language?

Thanks,
Enock Prince

[softwaretestingforum]

Hello Enoc,

Welcome to the group.
You questions are very specific and let's see them one by one

Enock Prince wrote

Selenium RC
or
Selenium Webdriver

Since you are beginning with Selenium my direct answer is to use Selenium WebDriver. In fact there is no real development happening with Selenium RC now. The teams who have heavily invested in Selenium RC are suggested to port their code to WebDriver. But why use WebDriver ?

1. Because WebDriver emulates real user and not Selenium RC. Selenium RC injects js in web application to be able to control it which is not right. A tool should not be intrusive, a tool should not change state of application to be able to control browser. WebDriver tests web application non intrusively and Selenium RC does not.

2. Selenium RC' support for multiple browsers is only in theory. I used to come across lots of security alerts in IE and never tried Google Chrome with Selenium RC. While both of them work pretty smooth with Selenium WebDriver.

Enock Prince wrote

Which one most of the companies are using?

I can not really say confidently on it. But I come across more users of Selenium in java than in any other language

Enock Prince wrote

If you are suggesting RC, then which language we can choose?

This is a tough question and its answer depends on many factors like -

1. Which language are you comfortable with?
2. If you pick up the language used by your development team then you would have initial edge on debugging language related issues with the help of your development team.
3. Which language is most popular in Selenium world. As I said java looks most popular (I might be wrong though) but languages like C#, Python and PHP also have good user base.

Enock Prince wrote

If Webdriver, JS will do everything? or do i need to learn any other language?

I am not sure if WebDriver has js binding but I am sure there used to be one with Selenium RC. But then I have never come across any one using only js to driver Selenium tests.

I hope this answers all your questions.
let us know if you have any more questions.

[Illusion0Reality]

I am a QTP engineer and have learnt Selenium recently and designed framework.

QTP may not be out, as this is very strong in many areas - Addins (SAP,Siebel,Java,DotNet, Terminal Emulator etc.....and more). Windows testing can not be done with Selenium at all. AutoIT sort of tools should be used along with Selenium. this is a major advantage of QTP and a drawback to Selenium.

I believe QTP is and will be the leader!

Selenium is excellent with its Java and other language related APIs that give enormous power to test web apps.
And selenium makes any web element independent, unlike QTP. QTP strongly follows the hierarchy ( B.P.Object), where as selenium acts on ANY web element based on that element's own property, nothing else.

Now, selenium webdriver + java is the most used (maybe I am wrong) one. And I can see Java guys everywhere - even in a small start-up with just 10 resources.  So I can get help for debugging and many more things for Java.