1. Testing with Selenium IDE
By Nelz
(a.k.a. Nelson Carpentier)

2. Who Is Nelz? Software Engineer (Java/JEE) Mostly server-side focused
Experienced w/ testing and tools dev
Day job: Planet Out Inc.
Volunteer: Burning Man Web Team
Personal Site:
Sometimes contributor to Open Source projects: Maven, Jakarta Lang, Roller, CruiseControl (

3. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

4. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

5. Selenium Originally dubbed “Javascript Functional Test Runner”
Originally written by ThoughtWorks folks
Then open-sourced and re-named.
(Inside joke: the element selenium is a cure for mercury poisoning.)
Download all parts of the “suite” from
(This site also hosts Watir, Floyd, Frankenstein, etc...)

6. Selenium (cont)
Runs tests in IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc across OS'es
“Selenium uses JavaScript and IFrames to embed a test automation engine in your browser.”
The idea is that you can interact with the JavaScript to emulate a user's actions on your site that is presented within the IFrame.

7. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

8. Selenium Remote Control
Enables automated UI testing by controlling the full lifecycle of a browser, from starting a browser, to controlling it, to shutting it down.
Runs the “Selenium Server” as a local HTTP proxy.
You can “speak to” the Selenium Server in a variety of programming languages, which in turn “speaks Selenese” to the browser under its control.
Provides client libraries in Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Selenese, JavaScript

9. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

10. Selenium IDE Presentation Focus (Demo Upcoming) Complete IDE:
Debug, Breakpoint, Step Through
Intelligent Field Selection (XPath, names, ids)
Record & Playback (Easy!)
User extensible
Saves tests in multiple formats
Dynamic info possible (Using JavaScript)
Save Tests, Load other Tests
Manual source editing available

11. Selenium IDE Shortcomings Firefox Only
Long running session => Crashes?
AJAX => Gets Confused?

12. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

13. Selenium On Rails Personally unfamiliar From the site:
The Selenium Core files don‘t have to pollute /public.
No need to create suite files, they are generated on the fly — one suite per directory in /test/selenium (suites can be nested).
Instead of writing the test cases in HTML you can use a number of better formats (see Formats).
Loading of fixtures and wiping of session (/selenium/setup)

14. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

15. Record Session
Find that pesky typo
“assertNotExist”

16. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

17. Replay Session Find that bug again
Can use in development cycle when trying to get to a specific page.

18. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

19. Hand Off Session Sneakernet as analogy for Issue Tracking System
“Selenese” a better “least common denominator” than verbal/prose communication
Save off as script/program, add to automated suite

20. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

21. Possibility
Have end user (internal) fire up Selenium IDE before a 'work session'
Selenium silently records in the background
When something 'bad' happens, you have a client-side record of what exact steps were taken
Users can no longer “lie” about what they did
Moves logging to the source side, reducing the need to reverse-engineer via server logs

22. Agenda Overview of Selenium “Suite” Selenium Selenium RC Selenium IDE
(Selenium on Rails)
Selenium IDE Demo
Record Session
Replay Session
Hand Off Session
Selenium As Black Box?
Outline of possibility
Possible Drawbacks?

23. Possible Drawbacks Memory Usage in long-running session Big Logs?
Modify Firefox extension for this purpose? (Rolling logs?)
AJAX?
Multi-tab browsing?
Only applicable for “internal customers”

24. Wrap Up
QUESTIONS?

25. Wrap Up
Thank you!