Selenium

Automation for web applications

As organizations adopt Agile development, functionality and complexity grow and code bases expand rapidly. Testers must work with developers throughout iterations while ensuring previously released features remain functional and manual testing alone can’t always keep pace. Test automation can provide a solution to verifying both new and existing functionalities, especially with short sprints. XBOSoft strategically chose Selenium for web-based test automation, complemented by Appium for mobile platforms. We’ve developed numerous Selenium testing frameworks that facilitate cross-browser and regression testing.

Selenium & open source benefits

Selenium is a powerful open-source testing tool that gained popularity due to its flexibility and extensive capabilities. As an open-source solution, it offers several benefits beyond just being free

  • Higher Quality: The open-source nature allows for rigorous peer review and community contributions, enhancing the overall quality of the tool.
  • Transparency: Users can inspect the codebase and updates, ensuring trust in the software they use.
  • Customization: Organizations can modify and extend the source code to meet specific testing needs, and implement add-on test tools (e.g., Maven w/ Jenkins) to support continuous integration, customized report generation, and distribution
  • Interoperability: Supports multiple programming languages (Java, C#, Python, Ruby), integrates with various testing frameworks (e.g., JUnit, TestNG), and works across different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux).
  • Flexibility: Allows customization of test scripts and frameworks to suit specific needs, and supports parallel test execution through Selenium Grid, minimizing test time by running tests simultaneously on multiple machines.
  • Community Support: A vibrant community actively participates in troubleshooting and improving the tool, providing resources for users to solve problems they encounter.

Challenges

While Selenium has an active support community, solutions aren’t always easy to find, even when trying to solve common issues such as object recognition. Download our white paper Solving Selenium Common Issues – Tips and Tricks to better understand how to locate elements in Selenium, why it’s important, and some of the approaches and solutions we’ve identified for addressing this challenging issue, including:

  • Why we use it and the benefits
  • Recognizing weaknesses and using XPath axes for element location in Selenium WebDriver
  • Improving automated testing with XPath axes
  • Identifying XPath’s weaknesses and solutions
  • Alternatives to XPath

Why choose XBOSoft

Our journey with the Selenium Automation Testing Tool is extensive and hasn’t always been easy. While we’ve designed and implemented many testing frameworks that significantly improvement script execution speeds and maintainability, we’ve also learned valuable lessons that inform our practices today for long-term success. Some key insights include:

  • Optimizing efficiency: Integrating seamlessly with essential development and continuous integration tools
  • Resolving compatibility issues: Addressing challenges between Selenium WebDriver and specific browser drivers (e.g., ChromeDriver) to eliminate crashes created by third party development
  • Reliable element location: Developing techniques to identify elements and objects, effectively, across varying contexts
  • Understanding Capabilities: Recognizing where Selenium excels, such as web application testing, regression testing, and cross-browser testing, where it may not be ideal (e.g., Windows controls), and how to overcome these problems

When encountering issues like ChromeDriver crashes or other framework-related problems, we have successfully developed rapid solutions to mitigate these challenges. This flexibility is one of the main reasons we favor Selenium for developing our testing frameworks and to ensure maintainability and robustness.

We believe our success stems from our talented team, which possesses hundreds of years of combined test experience. The Selenium Framework has proven to be an excellent tool for developing and executing automated tests. Through our experience, we have mastered Selenium and enhanced our services by customizing and extending the TestNG framework. Additionally, we have tailored our configurations to support new reporting functions that allow us to feed Jenkins test results into client’s test case management systems.

What this means for you

  1. Leverage Open Source Benefits: Implement a Selenium-based test automation framework
  2. Quick Start-Up: Benefit from XBOSoft’s years of experience in resolving complex Selenium issues and adapting to software requirements across many sectors
  3. Long-Term Framework: Obtain a Selenium automation testing framework that is scalable and requires optimal maintenance effort
  4. Increase Test Coverage: Rapidly enhance your test automation coverage and improve software quality
  5. Complement Manual Testing: Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for exploratory testing, cross-browser testing, innovation, and more

Mitel Case Study

Mitel, based in Ontario, Canada, is a global provider of cloud communications. XBOSoft began providing testing services in 2010 to Benbria, at the time a small start-up whose product division was acquired by Mitel in 2016. They rely on us for a wide range of testing services including API Automated Testing and Selenium Automated Testing. To learn more about our collaboration with Mitel, check out our Mitel case study.

Certified expertise, reliable results

We hold PMP, ISTQB, and ISO27001 certifications, reflecting our adherence to rigorous standards in project management, software testing, information security, and internal controls.

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