Selenium IDE

An excellent tool for quality testers, Selenium IDE is a record & play utility that comes as an extension for the browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

Pros

• Simple interface
• Fast setup
• Quick turnaround time
• Cross-browser testing
• Grouping of commands
• Reuse of test cases
• Extensible with plugins

Cons

• No conformity to the standard
• Not so reliable

Specifically developed to facilitate QA test automation on modern web browsers, Selenium IDE is a playback tool that allows creating functional tests without requiring any knowledge of scripting language. It is a complete environment for Selenium tests implemented as an add-on on Chrome and Firefox to allow recording, editing, and debugging tests.

Selenium IDE is a simple-to-use tool that lets you run functional tests on any platform and browser using a command line. It can be quickly set up without any knowledge of programming languages or a degree. It allows executing individual as well as group tests with a rich set of commands. The SIDE runner can be used to automate browser testing and setting breakpoints for easy debugging.

All the test scripts created with Selenium IDE are saved as JSON files to make it easy to modify, inspect and compare tests. The extensive set of commands enable a control flow structure with commands like if and else aiding execution of conditional tests. The run command also lets you reuse any test case inside another test case or set.

Bottom Line

Selenium IDE is one of the tools aimed at making life simpler for technical people. Though far from being perfect, it is much more than a record and playback tool with a wide range of useful features. While it does not replace the WebDriver used for test automation, it surely adds value to automated testing. It is, overall, a user-friendly tool that Quality Assurance specialists can use to perform simple tasks so that they can focus on other more important jobs.