How To Choose What Test Automation Tool To Learn

Learning Selenium WebDriver is the best investment that a manual tester can make for his test automation career.

Selenium WebDriver is very popular in the last few years for many reasons:

1. language independent
2. operating system independent
3. free
4. open source
5. backed by Google and Facebook

The fact that test automation vendors started integrating with Selenium scripts and the Selenium W3C standard being close to be approved will make Selenium WebDriver even more popular in the near future.


Why is Selenium WebDriver the best choice for learning a test automation tool?



Selenium WebDriver is language-independent

Until recently, QTP allowed test scripts to be created only using VB Script. VB Script is not an object oriented language so the script development is not very flexible.

VB Script is no longer the only language allowed by QTP.

Starting with UFT 12.5, QTP includes a new module called LeanFT which makes it possible to use C# and Java for script development.

Selenium WebDriver does not force the tester to use a specific language.

The automation tester can choose a language from the following list:

1. C#
2. Java
3. Perl
4. Php
5. Python
6. Ruby
7. JavaScript
8. Objective C
9. R

This is possible due to Selenium Client And WebDriver Language Bindings being available for all languages mentioned above.



Selenium WebDriver can be installed on any operating system

QTP works only on Windows operating systems.

In contrast, you can use Selenium WebDriver on Windows but also on Mac, Linux and UNIX.



Selenium WebDriver scripts can be executed on all major operating systems, browsers, mobile devices

When creating test scripts with the Selenium WebDriver framework, the test scripts can be executed on hundreds of operating system/browser/mobile device combinations through the SauceLabs cloud service grid.

It is also possible to set up your own automation environment with the Selenium Grid component.

With UFT, the only option is to build your own automation environment.






Vendor automation tools started to integrate with Selenium scripts

SmartBear, one of the main automation tool vendors, added to the latest version of TestComplete the ability of integrating with Selenium scripts.

The TestComplete test suites will be a mix of TestComplete and Selenium tests.

This integration with Selenium will probably be followed by other vendors.



Browser vendors will build their own Selenium drivers

The Selenium W3C standard draft is pending approval.

As soon as it is approved, the browser vendors will probably use it for building their own Selenium drivers and integrate them with the browser.

With Selenium drivers being a part of the browser, the Selenium WebDriver framework will be the number 1 choice for web test automation.

Learn How To Create Your First Selenium Project

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Alex Siminiuc