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Codeless Selenium for Web App Testing

Lucia Cavero-Baptista

Lucia Cavero-Baptista

When we think of web application testing with test automation, the first thing that comes to mind is Selenium. And no wonder why: it's free and available for all.

This open-source automation tool took the testing world by a storm. However, no automation tool works like a magic wand, and so Selenium test automation has its disadvantages. Even though it enables skilled testers to automate any web application in several programming languages, the complexity of these programming languages is the reason why Selenium is not the best automation tool for all.

Selenium requires the tester to have a thorough understanding of coding. This means that if your scripting skills are not top-notch, it will probably take you a long time to get started with Selenium and, later on, will require a fair amount of maintenance.

The Automation Paradox

The underlying problem with this is that testers are expected to learn how to code, or at least just enough to make automation work. By forcing testers to code automated tests, we are taking time away from the tester’s primary function: ensuring the highest quality possible by exploring and recognizing the various situations in which a web application might malfunction as the application evolves.

The paradox is obvious: automation, which was supposed to free up testers of repetitive and time-consuming software testing, now requires more time and maintenance than manual testing. Yet, many organizations expect testers to know just enough code to make automation work, without really thinking of what happens once those test cases go from a dozen to a few hundred.

The result is generally poorly-made automated test cases that are fragile, hard to re-use, hard to troubleshoot, and impossible to update when the web application changes. Therefore, after a few months, the QA team finds that most of the test cases start to fail. This is not so much because of bugs but because the automation cases no longer match the product.

Then, since no one knows how to update those test cases, it is decided that they should be discarded, and a new batch of automation cases is created to replace the old ones.

Another option would be to have a developer on call. However, developer dependencies are very costly and they require the developer to take time away from his or her primary function: to improve the application by developing quality code.

So the question that many QA teams ponder on is: Is it possible to use Selenium without having any coding skills?

Codeless Automation With Selenium

Leapwork runs on Selenium, but it doesn’t require you to have any programming skills. This means that you are still testing with Selenium but through an intuitive and visual UI, while Leapwork does all the hard work under the hood.

Not only that, Leapwork gives you the ability to test across browsers and across technologies. Meaning that if your web application, or any of the critical business processes running through it, depends on other systems or technologies, you can perform end-to-end tests and ensure continuous integration through Leapwork.

In this video, we timed two testers building the same test case to demonstrate the speed and efficiency of codeless test automation. One is using Selenium and the other one is using codeless Selenium through Leapwork:

 

This video clearly shows the potential of codeless Selenium through Leapwork, however, if you want to dig deeper into the subject, read the blog post: Leapwork vs. Selenium Web Application

Are you still wondering if Selenium is worth the investment? Download the whitepaper:

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