In the modern generation, competition has massively increased in the application development market. Market analysis shows that almost thousands of new apps arrive in the market every day. In such a scenario app-developing companies need to maintain the high quality of their applications. This is because user interaction and user engagement are two of the most important parameters that help companies to maintain their position in this competitive segment of the industry. Many experts believe that a single crash in the application is enough to massively increase the bounce rates resulting in the users never returning to the application. In such cases, we can easily justify the importance of a proper testing phase. Due to the complexity of modern applications, automation testing with tools such as Selenium WebDriver becomes even more important.
User acceptance testing is an important form of test case that helps to verify the proper functioning of the application. In this article, we’re going to discuss all the important details regarding the automation of user acceptance testing with the help of Selenium WebDriver 4.
The Basics of Automation testing
Automation testing has become one of the mandatory standards of the modern application development market. This is because modern apps are very complex consisting of multiple elements that need to work smoothly simultaneously. Therefore, it becomes almost impossible for complete manual test cases to complete the verification process for these elements. Using automated test scripts, the developers can use multiple predetermined parameters to automatically conduct these complex test cases. The developers can also change the data present in these parameters to ensure the test cases are properly customized according to the requirements of their development project. Automation testing also allows the testers and developers to easily store and reuse certain sections of the test code in future development projects as well.
While we’re on the topic of test automation, it is worth mentioning that the initial charges of integrating test automation in your testbench are quite high. So, the application development teams need to have a proper conversation with the business team for understanding the sustainability capabilities of the company. It is also a very good idea for app developers to consider test automation as a long-term investment. Lastly, we would also recommend the developers maintain a proper synchronization with automated test cases and manual test cases. This is because certain critical testing processes like exploratory testing and visual element testing are impossible to execute without the presence of a human developer consisting of experience and knowledge.
Understanding Selenium
The basic definition of Selenium explains it as an open-source umbrella project for the automation of modern web apps. Selenium was initially released in 2004 and has managed to hold one of the top positions for almost a decade. Selenium is a test suite consisting of multiple different tools that help the developers during different stages of the automation testing process. It is a very interesting fact that Selenium was initially known as JavaScriptTestRunner. This name was chosen by the parent company as this test suite was developed with the JavaScript programming language. Over time, Selenium has gone through four major updates that have highly improved the quality of the tools present in the Selenium test suite. It is worth mentioning that the Selenium WebDriver is one of the most massively improved tools with the Selenium 4 update.
For the sake of the new automation testers, we would like to mention that one of the major drawbacks of Selenium automation testing is that it can only be implemented on web applications. Considering there are multiple different types of applications available in the market, this limitation can massively downgrade the development capabilities of these companies. Now let us take a detailed look at all the component tools present in the Selenium Test Suite:
The Selenium WebDriver is the most important component of the Selenium test suite. This is because with this tool the developers can not only initiate the automation testing processes but also allocate them to the target elements of the application. After the recent update, the Selenium WebDriver 4 has improved the advantages of the testing process by almost eliminating all the limitations. Unlike the Selenium integrated development environment, the Selenium WebDriver 4 has increased its support and compatibility with multiple platforms and browsers. It is worth mentioning that the Selenium WebDriver uses the native support of browsers for smoothly executing all the test cases.
The Selenium grid is responsible for integrating automation testing with parallel testing. Parallel testing is a modern feature that helps developers to improve the efficiency of the testing process and reduce the time to almost a few days. For this purpose, the Selenium grid uses the principle of a hub connected to several nodes. As soon as the hub receives a test case, it analyzes it and forwards it to the respective node for the execution process. The system repeats this process in a cycle until all the test cases are completed.
The Selenium client API helps the developers to write the automation test cases in multiple popular programming languages. A very interesting fact is that before the introduction of this tool the developers had to learn a proprietary language known as the Selenese language for use in the Selenium test suite. This language barrier massively crippled the innovative capabilities of automation testers and developers. Now the developers can write the Selenium automation test cases in multiple popular programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Ruby. After this process, they have the freedom of importing all the test cases in the native Selenium background.
The Selenium integrated development environment helps the developers to create the automation test cases. It takes a very unique approach by analyzing the user inputs and creating the test cases accordingly. This means the automation testers have to use the application like a normal end user and the system will continue to generate the test cases in real-time. After the Selenium 4 update, the company has tried to massively improve the development and testing capabilities of the Selenium IDE. Although many automation testers still prefer to use the Selenium WebDriver over the Selenium IDE for the development of the test cases.
The Major Features of Selenium
Now that we have finished discussing all the basic information regarding Selenium, it is time to improve our knowledge about all the major features available with the Selenium automation test suite. This knowledge will also help the new automation testers utilize the most out of their test cases. They are as follows:
1. Selenium supports multiple different platforms. This means that while using Selenium for the execution of automation test cases the developers can initiate these test cases on different platforms. Multi-platform support is one of the most essential features of the modern application development industry. It helps to massively increase the customer base for the companies.
2. Selenium also supports almost all the major browsers that are currently available in the market. While using Selenium, the developers can also verify the functioning of their applications on certain browsers that are no longer available in the industry. It is a very important practice as a recent market analysis shows that almost 70% of the user base does not frequently update their browsers.
3. While using Selenium the developers are not bound by any form of language barrier. This means the automation testers can create the test cases in all the major programming languages according to their preferences. For instance, Selenium supports some of the major names like Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and C#.
4. Selenium allows developers to initiate cross-browser testing on web applications. Cross-browser testing is an important process to ensure that you provide the highest compatibility irrespective of hardware or software specifications. We will learn more about the importance of cross-browser compatibility test cases in the latter part of this article.
5. Application developers need to ensure that their app is available on all mobile platforms. While using Selenium, the developers can verify the functioning of the application on mobile platforms as well.
Various platforms like LambdaTest play a critical role in improving the efficiency of functional testing with Selenium. For instance, LambdaTest helps developers to integrate cloud testing and eliminate the headache of maintaining an on-site device test bench. It also helps the developer execute the Selenium test cases on more than 3000 different types of browsers. LambdaTest improves cross-browser compatibility standards by initiating test cases on different browsers and device combinations at the same time. The developers can access all the features of LambdaTest by paying only a minimum license fee. LambdaTest improves the accuracy of the test reports by combining all the results from emulators, simulators, and cloud-based real devices.
The Base of User Acceptance Testing
User acceptance testing is also popularly known as functional testing. With the help of these test cases, the developers have to verify the functioning of the application against their company’s business perspective. This process helps them to ensure that all the functions present in the application are working as intended. One of the best practices related to functional testing is conducting these test cases from the perspective of the common user. This process not only helps the developers to ensure the accuracy of the testing process but also improves the overall test coverage. It is worth mentioning that certain tests like user acceptance testing focuses on the features and specifications of the application. This means with these test cases the developers cannot test the functioning of the core structure of the app.
The Conclusion
So, we can easily conclude that user acceptance testing is one of the most important components of the application development lifecycle. With the help of functional test cases, the developers can ensure that all the basic functions of the application are not only working perfectly but are available to the common users. Moreover, automating these test cases will further help the companies to improve the efficiency of the test cases. However, automation testers need to have the proper knowledge in this segment to utilize the full potential of the test bench. App development companies also have a critical role in keeping their developers updated with all the recent market trends. The developers should also consider the knowledge of automation testing critical for maintaining their position in the future app development industry.
Apart from this, if you want to know about Top Cypress testing trends to look for 2023 then please visit our Technology category
