Top Selenium Interview Questions

Q – 1 Tell me is it possible to use Selenium for multi-user Load Testing?

Ans- Yes, but it requires a LOT of hardware. We recommend you check out BrowserMob, which does load testing with real browsers and is powered by Selenium.

Q – 2 Do you know actual end user simulation, Is the test conducted using this tool equivalent to an end user action?

Ans- Selenium performs actions in the background on the browser. It modifies the DOM structure of the HTML page in order to perform actions on the page. To be more precise it executes JavaScript on UI objects within the webpage to perform actions like click, type, select etc.

This is the reason why you can execute tests with the browser minimized.

QTP claims to perform end user simulation, in other words executing QTP scripts are equivalent to a person performing those steps manually on the application.

Q – 3 Explain how to configure Selenium RC with eclipse to run Junit Tests?

Ans-

1) Download eclipse. click here to download the software
2) Open eclipse -> Workspace Launcher window will open
3) Create a workspace by giving meaningful name
3) Click on Workbench
4) Create a project of type java
5) Create a package under src folder of the package
6) Add Junit to the build path
7) Add selenium rc java client driver to the build path
8) Now drag and drop your test script (.which is exported from Selenium IDE) to the package created.

Q – 4 Explain what is the difference between Thread.Sleep() and Selenium.setSpeed()?

Ans- Selenium.setSpeed:

1. takes a single argument in string format ex: selenium.setSpeed(“2000”) – will wait for 2 seconds
2. Runs each command in after setSpeed delay by the number of milliseconds mentioned in setSpeed.

Thread.sleep:

1. takes a single argument in integer format
ex: thread.sleep(2000) – will wait for 2 seconds
2. Waits for only once at the command given at sleep.

Q – 5 Tell me what are the basic annotations used to run TestNG tests in Selenium?

Ans- The basic annotations used to run TestNG tests in Selenium RC:

1. @BeforeClass:

The annotated method with @BeforeClass will be run before the first test method in the current class is invoked.

2. @AfterClass:

The annotated method with @AfterClass will be run after all the test methods in the current class have been run.

3. @BeforeMethod:

The annotated method with @BeforeMethod will be run before each test method.

4. @AfterMethod:

The annotated method with @AfterMethod will be run after each test method.

5. @Test:

Marks a class or a method @Test with as part of the test.

Q – 6 Explain does Selenium support mobile internet testing?

Ans- Selenium supports Opera and opera is used in most of the Smart phones. So whichever Smart phone supports opera, selenium can be used to test. So, one can use Selenium RC to run the tests on mobiles.

Q – 7 Tell me what is the architecture of Selenium RC?

Ans- The Selenium Server launches and kills browsers and acts as an HTTP proxy for browser requests. Client libraries for various programming languages, each of which instructs the Selenium Server in how to test the AUT by passing it your test script’s Selenium commands.

The client libraries communicate with the Server passing each Selenium command for execution. Then the server passes the Selenium command to the browser using Selenium-Core JavaScript commands. The browser, using its JavaScript interpreter, executes the Selenium command, which effectively, runs the check you specified in your Selenese test script.

Q – 8 Explain how many testing frameworks can QA Tester use in Selenium RC?

Ans- Testing frameworks aren’t required, but they can be helpful if QA Tester wants to automate test cases. Selenium RC supports Bromine, JUnit, NUnit, RSpec (Ruby), Test::Unit (Ruby), TestNG (Java), unittest (Python).

Q – 9 Do you know why Selenium RC is used?

Ans- We use Selenium RC for:

Selenium-IDE does not directly support:

1. Condition statements.
2. Iteration.
3. Logging and reporting of test results.
4. Error handling, particularly unexpected errors.
5. Database testing.
6. Test case grouping.
7. Re-execution of failed tests.
8. Test case dependency.
9. Capture screen shots on test failures.
The reason behind why Selenium-IDE does not support the above mentioned requirements is IDE supports only HTML language. Using HTML language we cannot achieve the above mentioned requirements. Because HTML does not support conditional, looping and external source connectives. To overcome the above mentioned problems Selenium RC is used.

Q – 10 Suppose if a Selenium function requires a pattern argument, what five prefixes might that argument have?

Ans- Five prefixes that Selenium pattern argument are:

glob, regexp, exact, regexpi.

Q – 11 Explain if a Selenium function requires a script argument, what would that argument look like in general terms?

Ans- StoreEval(script, variable) and storeExpression(expression, variableName).

Q – 12 Tell me what is the difference between an assert and a verify with Selenium commands?

Ans-

Assert:

Will fail and abort the current test execution.

Verify:

Will fail and continue to run the test execution.

Q – 13 what are the Operating Systems supported by Selenium?

Ans- Operating Systems supported by Selenium are:

Selenium IDE
Works in Firefox 2+ Start browser, run tests Run tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows,
2. OS X
3. Linux
4. Solaris
5. Others whichever supports Firefox 2+

Selenium Remote Control
Used for starting browser and run tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows,
2. OS X
3. Linux
4. Solaris
5. Others

Selenium Core
Used for running tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows,
2. OS X
3. Linux
4. Solaris
5. Others

Q – 14 Tell me which are the browsers supported by Selenium RC?

Ans- Browsers supported by Selenium RC are:

1. firefox
2. mock
3. firefoxproxy
4. pifirefox
5. chrome
6. iexploreproxy
7. explore
8. firefox3
9. safariproxy
10. googlechrome
11. konqueror
12. firefox2
13. safari
14. piiexplore
15. firefoxchrome
16. opera
17. iehta
18. custom

Q – 15 What are the capabilities of Selenium WebDriver or Google WebDriver or Selenium 2.0?

Ans- Capabilities of Selenium WebDriver or Google WebDriver or Selenium 2.0 are:

One should use WebDriver when requiring improved support for

1. Mult-browser testing including improved functionality for browsers not well-supported by Selenium-1.0.
2. Handling multiple frames, multiple browser windows, pop-ups, and alerts.
3. Page navigation.
4. Drag-and-drop.
5. AJAX-based UI elements.

Q – 16 Which is the command used for displaying the values of a variable into the output console or log?

Ans- The command used for displaying the values of a variable into the output
console or log–echo
If you want to display a constant string. The below mentioned command can be used echo

ex: echo “The sample message”

If you want to display the value of a variable it can be written like below
echo ${>

ex:

echo ${var1}

Q – 17 What are the limitations of Selenium IDE?

Ans- The limitations of Selenium IDE are:

1) Selenium IDE uses only HTML language
2) Conditional or branching statements execution like using of if, select statements is not possible
3) Looping statements using is not possible directly in Selenium HTML language in ide
4) Reading from external files like .txt, .xls is not possible
5) Reading from the external databases is not possible with ide
6) Exceptional handling is not there
7) A neat formatted Reporting is not possible with ide
To eliminate the above issues we use Selenium RC

Q – 18 How do you set user extensions in Selenium IDE?

Ans-

1. Open user-extensions.js with an editor (Notepad, etc.); it’s found in the seleniumcorescripts folder. If it doesn’t exist, just create it.
2. If you need to, commit the user-extensions.js file (like if you use subversion).
3. Open Selenium IDE and choose the Options menu and then Options… from that menu.
4. Make sure the path to your user-extensions.js file is entered in the Selenium Core extensions field (like seleniumcorescriptsuser-extensions.js)
5. Press OK button on options
6. Restart the IDE to reflect your extensions.

Note:

After reopen, Selenium IDE may show compilations errors if the user-extensions.js file has any syntax errors.

Q – 19 What is the difference between captureEntirePageScreenshot and CaptureScreenShot?

Ans- captureEntirePageScreenshot

1. This captures the AUT web page only
2. This supports only mozilla firefox
3. Accepts two arguments. one is the file name to be saved and other argument is back ground color

CaptureScreenShot

1. This captures the System screen shot
2. This supports all the browsers when you run from Selenium RC
3. Accepts one argument. That is the file name to be saved.

Q – 20 Which are the commands used for capturing the bitmaps?

Ans- captureEntirePageScreenshot

Saves the entire contents of the current window canvas to a PNG file. Contrast this with the captureScreenshot command, which captureS the contents of the OS viewport (i.e. whatever is currently being displayed on the monitor), and isimplemented in the RC only.

Currently this only works in Firefox when running in chrome mode, and in IE non-HTA using the EXPERIMENTAL “Snapsie” utility. The Firefox implementation is mostly borrowed from the Screengrab! Firefox extension. Please see captureEntirePageScreenshot for more details

captureEntirePageScreenshotAndWait

Saves the entire contents of the current window canvas to a PNG file. Contrast this with the captureScreenshot command, which captures the contents of the OS viewport (i.e. whatever is currently being displayed on the monitor), and is implemented in the RC only.

Currently this only works in Firefox when running in chrome mode, and in IE non-HTA using the EXPERIMENTAL “Snapsie” utility. The Firefox implementation is mostly borrowed from the Screengrab! Firefox extension. Please see
captureEntirePageScreenshotAndWait for details.

Note:

This command runs with only mozilla firefox when you run the tests from RC. Other browsers it will not support

Q – 21 How to capture bitmaps in Selenium?

Ans-

Bitmaps are captured using the Selenium set of commands. There are two modes of capturing the bitmaps
1) Capture the bitmap for the entire page – it captures the browser main page area of AUT
2) Capture the bitmap for the screen shots – it captures the entire screen shot like the print scree that you give from your keyboard
Selenium doesn’t support bitmap capturing for an element on AUT.

Q – 22 When to use Accessors in Selenium?

Ans- Accessors are mostly used for storing the value in a variable.

The variable can be used for following reasons:

1) To get the value from an element and comparing with some dynamic value
2) To take a logical decision to execute the test steps
ex: if the value of the variable true execute step1 and step2 else step3 and step4
3) To execute some statements in a loop based on the value returned by the element

Q – 23 What is an Accessor in Selenium?

Ans- Accessor is one of the type of Selenese.
I. Accessors are used for storing the value of a target in a variable.

Ex:

1) storeTitle – Stores the title of a window in a variable
2) storeText – Stores the target element text in a variable

II. Accessors are also used for evaluating the result and storing the result in a variable

Ex:

storeTextPresent – Evaluates whether the text is Present in the current window. If the text is present storestrue in the variable else stores false

Ex:

storeEementPresent – Evaluates whether the element is present in the current window. If the element is present stores true in the variable else stores false

Q – 24 When to use Assert, Verify and WaitFor in Selenium?

Ans-

1) assert – If the expected value is mandatory to continue with the next set of steps we will use Assert. As Assert aborts the test, if the expected value doesn’t match. It is good to use for any mandatory checks.
2) verify – If the expected value is optional to continue with the next set of steps we will use Verify. As Verify continues executing with the next set of steps, if the expected value doesn’t match. It is good to use for any optional checks.
3) waitFor – If your test needs to wait, if the expected value is not matching we use waitFor. We normally use waitFor for AJAX kind of controls loading within a page.

Q – 25 What are the types of Assertions there in Selenium?

Ans- Selenium Assertions can be used in 3 modes:

1) assert – When an “assert” fails, the test will be aborted. If you are executing test suite, the next state case will start
2) verify – When a “verify” fails, the test will continue execution, logging the failure.
3) waitFor – “waitFor” commands wait for some condition to become true (which can be useful for testing Ajax applications). They will succeed immediately if the condition is already true. However, they will fail and halt the test if the condition does not become true within the current timeout setting.

Q – 26 What is Assertion in Selenium?

Ans- Assertion is nothing but a check or verification point.
Assertion verifies the state of the application conforms to what is expected.
Examples include “make sure the page title is X” and “verify that this checkbox is checked.

Q – 27 How do you add check points or verification points in Selenium?

Ans- check points or verification points are known as Assertions in Selenium. The keywords with below mentioned prefix will be used for adding check points or verification points.

1. verify
2. assert
3. waitFor

Q – 28 What is Selenese?

Ans- Selenium set of commands which are used for running the test are called as Selenese.

There are three types of Selenese, those are:

1. Actions – used for performing the operations and interactions with the target elements
2. Assertions – used as check points
3. Accessors – used for storing the values in a variable

Q – 29 What are the regular expression patterns available in Selenium?

Ans- Selenium regular expression patterns offer the same wide array of special characters that exist in JavaScript. Below are a subset of those special characters

.
any single character

[ ]

character class:

any single character that appears inside the brackets

*

quantifier:

0 or more of the preceding character (or group)

+

quantifier:

1 or more of the preceding character (or group)

?

quantifier:

0 or 1 of the preceding character (or group)

{1,5}

quantifier:

1 through 5 of the preceding character (or group)

|

alternation:

the character/group on the left or the
character/group on the right

( )

grouping:

often used with alternation and/or quantifier

Q – 30 How to use regular expressions in Selenium?

Ans- Regular expressions in Selenium IDE can be used with the keyword – regexp: as a prefix to the value and patterns needs to be included for the expected values.

For example if you want to use the regular expression for a command

Command:

verifyText

Target:

//font/font/b/font[1]

Value:

Flight Confirmation # 2011-05-02451
in the above example Flight Confirmation is continuously changing each time you run the test case. So this can be writtenwith a regular expression as mentioned below

Command: verifyText
Target: //font/font/b/font[1]
Value: regexp:Flight Confirmation # [0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{5,10}

Q – 31 What are the types of text patterns available in Selenium?

Ans- There are three types of patterns available in Selenium
1. globbing
2. regular expressions
3. exact

Q – 32 Does Selenium support Google Android Operating System?

Ans- Yes, Selenium Web Driver or Google Web Driver or Selenium 2.0 supports Android Operating System. There are several libraries written to support Android Operating System.

Q – 33 Does Selenium support mobile internet testing?

Ans- Selenium supports Opera. And opera is used in most of the Smart phones. So whichever Smart phone supports opera, selenium can be used to test. So, one can use Selenium RC to run the tests on mobiles.

Q – 34 What is the architecture of Selenium Grid?

Ans- Selenium Grid builds on the traditional Selenium setup, taking advantage of the following properties:

* The Selenium test, the application under test, and the remote control/browser pair do not have to be co-located. They communicate through HTTP, so they can all live on different machines.
* The Selenium tests and the web application under test are obviously specific to a particular project. Nevertheless, neither the Selenium remote control nor the browser is tied to a specific application. As a matter of fact, they provide a capacity that can easily be shared by multiple applications and multiple projects.

Consequently, if only we could build a distributed grid of Selenium Remote Controls, we could easily share it across builds, applications, projects – even potentially across organizations.

Of course we would also need to address the scalability issues as described earlier when covering the traditional Selenium setup. This is why we need a component in charge of:

* Allocating a Selenium Remote Control to a specific test (transparently)
* Limiting the number of concurrent test runs on each Remote Control
* Shielding the tests from the actual grid infrastructure

Selenium Grid calls this component the Selenium Hub.

* The Hub exposes an external interface that is exactly the same as the one of a traditional Remote Control. This means that a test suite can transparently target a regular Remote Control or a Selenium Hub with no code change. It just needs to target a different IP address.

This is important as it shields the tests from the grid infrastructure (which you can scale transparently). This also makes the developer’s life easier. The same test can be run locally on a developer machine, or run on a heavy duty distributed grid as part of a build – without ever changing a line of code.

* The Hub allocates Selenium Remote Controls to each test. The Hub is also in charge of routing the Selenese requestsfrom the tests to the appropriate Remote Control as well as keeping track of testing sessions.
* When a new test starts, the Hub puts its first request on hold if there is no available Remote Control in the grid providing the appropriate capabilities. As soon as a suitable Remote Control becomes available, the Hub will serve the request. For the whole time, the tests do not have to be aware of what is happening within the grid; it is just waiting for an HTTP response to come back.

Q – 35 What is the architecture of Selenium RC?

Ans- The Selenium Server which launches and kills browsers, and acts as an HTTP proxy for browser requests.
Client libraries for various programming languages, each of which instructs the Selenium Server in how to test the AUT bypassing it your test script’s Selenium commands.

The diagram shows the client libraries communicate with the Server passing each Selenium command for execution. Then the server passes the Selenium command to the browser using Selenium-Core JavaScript commands. The browser, using its JavaScript interpreter, executes the Selenium command, which effectively, runs the check you specified in your Selenese test script.

Q – 36 What are the capabilities of Selenium WebDriver or Google WebDriver or Selenium 2.0?

Ans- One should use WebDriver when requiring improved support for
• Mult-browser testing including improved functionality for browsers not well-supported by Selenium-1.0.
• Handling multiple frames, multiple browser windows, popups, and alerts.
• Page navigation.
• Drag-and-drop.
• AJAX-based UI elements.

Q – 37 What is Selenium WebDriver or Google WebDriver or Selenium 2.0?

Ans- WebDriver uses a different underlying framework from Selenium’s javascript Selenium-Core. It also provides an alternative API with functionality not supported in Selenium-RC. WebDriver does not depend on a javascript core embedded within the browser, therefore it is able to avoid some long-running Selenium limitations.

WebDriver’s goal is to provide an API that establishes

• A well-designed standard programming interface for web-app testing.
• Improved consistency between browsers.
• Additional functionality addressing testing problems not well-supported in Selenium 1.0.

The Selenium developers strive to continuously improve Selenium. Integrating WebDriver is another step in that process. The developers of Selenium and of WebDriver felt they could make significant gains for the Open Source test automation community be combining forces and merging their ideas and technologies. Integrating WebDriver into Selenium is the current result of those efforts.

Q – 38 What is Selenium Grid?

Ans- Selenium Grid is part of Selenium suite of projects. Selenium Grid transparently distribute your tests on multiple machines so that you can run your tests in parallel, cutting down the time required for running in-browser test suites. This will dramaticallyspeeds up in-browser web testing, giving you quick and accurate feedback you can rely on to improve your web application.

Q – 39 Which are the languages supported by Selenium RC?

Ans- The languages supported by Selenium RC

1. .Net,
2. Java (Junt 3, Junt 4, TestNG, Groovy)
3. Perl,
4. Python,
5. PHP,
6. Ruby

Q – 40 Why Selenium RC is used?

Ans- Selenium-IDE does not directly support:

1. condition statements
2. iteration
3. logging and reporting of test results
4. error handling, particularly unexpected errors
5. database testing
6. test case grouping
7. re-execution of failed tests
8. test case dependency
9. capture screenshots on test failures

The reason behind why Selenium-IDE does not support the above mentioned requirements is IDE supports only HTML language. Using HTML language we cannot achieve the above mentioned requirements. Because HTML does not support conditional, looping and external source connectives.

To overcome the above mentioned problems Selenium RC is used.

Since Selenium RC supports the languages .Net, Java, Perl, Python, PHP, and Ruby. In these languages we can write the programme to achieve the IDE issues

Q – 41 What is Selenium RC?

Ans- Selenium-RC is the solution for tests that need a little more than just simple browser actions and a linear execution. Selenium-RC leverages the full power of programming languages, creating tests that can do things like read and write external files, make queries to a database, send emails with test reports, and practically anything else a user can do with a normal application.

You will want to use Selenium-RC whenever your test requires logic not supported by running a script from Selenium-IDE

Q – 42 Which are the Operating Systems supported by Selenium?

Ans- Selenium IDE
Works in Firefox 2+ Start browser, run tests Run tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows, 2. OS X 3. Linux 4. Solaris 5. Others whichever supports Firefox 2+
Selenium Remote Control
Used for starting browser and run tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows, 2. OS X 3. Linux 4. Solaris 5. Others
Selenium Core
Used for running tests

Operating Systems Supported:

1. Windows, 2. OS X 3. Linux 4. Solaris 5. Others

Q – 43 Which are the browsers supported by Selenium RC?

Ans- Supported browsers for Selenium RC include:

(1). *firefox (2). *mock (3). *firefoxproxy (4). *pifirefox ((5). *chrome (6). *iexploreproxy (7). *iexplore (8). *firefox3 (9). *safariproxy (10). *googlechrome (11). *konqueror (12). *firefox2 (13). *safari (14). *piiexplore (15). *firefoxchrome (16). *opera (17). *iehta
(18). *custom

Note:

Any third party browser is supported with *custom followed by the complete path of the browser with executable

Q – 44 Which is the command used for displaying the values of a variable into the output console or log?

Ans- The command used for displaying the values of a variable into the output console or log – echo
If you want to display a constant string. The below mentioned command can be used
echo

ex:

echo “The sample message”
If you want to display the value of a variable it can be written like below
echo ${>
ex: echo ${var1}

Note:

Here var1 is the variable

Q – 45 How to export Selenium IDE Test Suite to Selenium RC Suites?

Ans- From selenium IDE the test cases can be exported into the languages as mentioned below
1. .Net, 2. Java, 3. Perl, 4. Python, 5. PHP, 6. Ruby
The below mentioned steps can explain how to export the test cases
1. Open the test case from Selenium IDE
2. Select File -> Export Test Case As

Q – 46 How to debug the tests in Selenium IDE?

Ans- To debug or execute the test cases line by line. Follow the below mentioned steps
1. Insert a break point (see the question to know more How to insert a break point in Selenium IDE? ) from the locationwhere you want to execute step by step
2. Run the test case
3. execution will be paused at the given break point
4. Click on the step (Blue) button to continue with the next statement
5. Click on Run button, to continue executing all the commands at a time

Q – 47 How to insert a break point in Selenium IDE?

Ans- Break point can be set in two ways in Selenium IDE
1. Right click on the command in Selenium IDE and select “Toggle Break Point”
2. Select the command in Selenium IDE and press “B” key on the keyboard
3. If you want to clear the break point once again Spress “B” key on the keyboard
4. You can set multiple break points in Selenium IDE

Q – 48 How to insert a comment in Selenium IDE?

Ans- Comments in Selenium IDE can be set in two ways
1. Right click on the command in Selenium IDE and select “Inert New Comment”
2. If you want to comment an existing line. You need to follow the below mentioned steps.
a. Select the source tab in IDE
b. Select the line which you want to comment
c. Assume that if you want to comment a open command you need to write like below mentioned code

1. Right click on the command in Selenium IDE and select “Execute This Command”
2. Select the command in Selenium IDE and press “X” key on the keyboard

Q – 51 Which are the browsers supported by Selenium IDE?

Ans- Selenium IDE supports only one browser Mozilla Firefox.

The versions supported as of now are:

Mozilla Firefox 2.x
Mozilla Firefox 3.x
The versions not supported as of now are:earlier versions of Mozilla Firefox 2.x
Mozilla Firefox 4.x

Q – 52 What are the challenges with Selenium IDE?

Ans- Selenium-IDE does not directly support:

1. condition statements
2. iteration or looping
3. logging and reporting of test results
4. error handling, particularly unexpected errors
5. database testing
6. test case grouping
7. re-execution of failed tests
8. test case dependency
9. capture screenshots on test failures
10. Results Report generations

Q – 53 What are the capabilities of Selenium IDE?

Ans- Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) works similar to commercialtools like QTP, Silk Test and Test Partner etc. The below mentioned points describes well about Selenium IDE.

1. Selenium IDE is a Firefox add-on.
2. Selenium IDE can support recording the clicks, typing, and other actions to make a test cases.
3. Using Selenium IDE A Tester can play back the test cases in the Firefox browser
4. Selenium IDE supports exporting the test cases and suites to Selenium RC.
5. Debugging of the test cases with step-by-step can be done
6. breakpoint insertion is possible
7. Page abstraction functionality is supported by Selenium IDE
8. Selenium IDE can supports an extensibility capability allowing the use of add-ons or user extensions that expand the functionality of Selenium IDE

Q – 54 What are the test types supported by Selenium?

Ans- Selenium could be used for testing the web based applications. The test types can be supported are: 1. functional, 2. regression, 3. load testing

The automation tool could be implemented for post release validation withcontinuous integration tools like:

1. Jenkins,
2. Hudson,
3. QuickBuild,
4. CruiseCont

Q – 55 What are the technical challenges with selenium?

Ans- As you know Selenium is a free ware open source testing tool. There are many challenges with Selenium.
1. Selenium Supports only web based applications
2. It doesn’t support any non web based (Like Win 32, Java Applet, Java Swing, .Net Client Server etc) applications
3. When you compare selenium with QTP, Silk Test, Test Partner and RFT, there are many challenges in terms of maintainability of the test cases
4. Since Selenium is a freeware tool, there is no direct support if one is in trouble with the support of applications
5. There is no object repository concept in Selenium, so maintainability of the objects is very high
6. There are many challenges if one have to interact with Win 32 windows even when you are working with Web based applications
7. Bitmap comparison is not supported by Selenium
8. Any reporting related capabilities, you need to depend on third party tools
9. You need to learn any one of the native language like (.Net, Java, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby) to work efficiently with the scripting side of selenium

Q – 56 What do you know about Selenium?

Ans- Selenium is a suite of tools for web automation testing.
Selenium first came to life in 2004 when Jason Huggins was testing an internalapplication at ThoughtWorks.
Selenium was a tremendous tool, it wasn’t without it’s drawbacks. Because of its Javascript based automation engine and the security limitations browsers apply to Javascript, different things became impossible to do.
Selenium Suite of projects include:
Selenium IDE
Selenium Core
Selenium 1 (known as. Selenium RC or Remote Control)
Selenium 2 (known as. Selenium Webdriver)
Selenium-Grid

Q – 57 Selenium vs Dejaclick?

Ans- Dejaclick is probably the best (free) macro tool for websites record and play. However Selenium beats DejaClick in overall features(multiple language suport vs only XML support, free automation vs paid automation).

Dejaclick Advantage:

It nicely plays back the recorded stuff – by highlighting appropriate items in green.
It can easily record flash/silverlight – by recording position.(however it may mean that it may not
nicely work in all computers)
It has facility to encrypt sensitive data in your file.

Dejaclick easily allow you to bookmark your script. So that you can play it back in one click.

You can easily toggle Dejaclick to True Screen mode(ie recording by mouse positions) by pressing Alt +
(some stuff are hard to record by name/ids)

Disadvantage:

Dejaclick recording tool is free – But for automation you have to rely on paid site alertsite (AlertSite however provides great facility for running your dejaclick script and even soap xml from most of cities/region in US/world. This will allow you to monitor your CDN performance/reliability or what content your website is serving across different regions)

Q – 58 Can you please explain Selenium vs Imacros?

Ans- Imacros appeared better in recording. But overall its not as powerful for automation(or scheduling).

Q – 59 Explain Selenium vs Watir?

Ans- If you like your test cases in Ruby (or maybe .net) and are willing to dig through “hard to understand” documentation – then Watir is a tool for you.(if you are perl/php/java shop – don’t even bother considering Watir for now)

Watir does have advantage that its recorder uses IE to record. With Selenium – if your site does not work with Firefox – you will have to manually write the code(not big deal)..

But the biggest advantage of Selenium is its support for FIT HTML and the vast languages/browsers/platform that it supports.
(with good documentation) But maybe things may change in future.

Q – 60 Explain Selenium vs Low/Network level tools like Webtest/HttpUnit/HtmlUnit(java)?

Ans- If you are using a “low/network” level tool like htmlunit then it has the advantage of being fast – but its javascript will not work work in most complex websites(besides not being a browser test) Selenium(java, .net) code also has the disadvantage of being dependent on RC server(not big deal).

You should continue low level tools like httpunit etc to use it for monitoring – but don’t use those tools for browser/regression testing.

Q – 61 Tell me do I Export in HTML or do I export in programming language like java client?

Ans- If you need dynamic capability (e.g. reading data from csv file or database) then you have to export it in programming language like java. You would also need to export in java – if your page has lots of flash
components. e.g. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/flash_selenium_04.html

There is also attempt to make silverlight work with java and .net out here.

The client code using java also is more stable (less permission denied errors) then
the html case.

But the html is easy to modify/maintain and it generates nice results – whereas in java client code it tends to be cryptic(but again html test case – does not seem to be flexible).

Q – 62 Tell me who should use Selenium?

Ans- Developers can use it – for “browser” regression testing ( and replace htmlunit/httpunit in some cases) .

Per the one of the forces behind selenium(Neal ford) – it should really be used by Business Analyst first .

QA should enhance/use it do regression test/cross browsers testing on all platforms .

Q – 63 Tell me what are the different modes that Selenium RC uses?

Ans- With latest release of Selenium RC(1.0 beta 2) there
are two modes for IE *iexplore(same as *iehta) and *iexploreproxy.
Similarly for Firefox use *firefox(same as *chrome) and *firefoxproxy.
You should prefere *iexplore(ie *iehta) and *firefox (ie *chrome)
respectively as they work with cross domain.

Q – 64 Explain how does Selenium remote control internally works?

Ans- Selenium RC launches the browser with itself as the proxy server (hence you may get certificate warning in some modes) and then it injects javascript – to play the test. This also means it can easily work in ALL browsers/platform – and it can be easily used to test AJAX(unlike professional tools).

Q – 65 Explain what are the components of selenium?

Ans- Selenium IDE – Plugin to Firefox to record and play test in firefox and also export tests in different languages. The most appealing format is the html test case which seems to based on fit html .

Selenium RC- Allows playing of exported test in different platform/OS
Selenium Grid – Allows to control lots of selenium machines(you typically dont need this only for load test -and hence may ignore it).

Q – 66 Do you know what does selenium do?

Ans- You can use opensource(ie free!) – Selenium tool ( selenium IDE is a plugin to firefox) to record and playback tests (like WinRunner, QTP). You can then export the recorded test in most language e.g. html, Java , .net , perl , ruby etc. The exported test can be run in any browser and any platform using “selenium remote control”.