The Alternative to Selenium that Doesn’t Require Coding

Owen Savage

Automation Expert

While Selenium presents an opportunity to escape lengthy manual processes and stop errors from occurring, it leads to its own problems. Implementing Selenium involves a lot of programming and maintaining test automation flows. So what’s an alternative to Selenium that doesn’t require coding? 

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What is selenium used for? 

An alternative that doesn’t require coding

The benefits of a no-code approach 

 

What is selenium used for? 

Selenium is an open-source framework for automated software testing. It is used to validate web applications across different browsers and platforms. 

Related reading: What is Selenium testing?

If your team is testing manually, you’re going to be spending a lot of time and resources that could be saved by automating the testing process. Therefore, it’s tempting to think that using Selenium to automate will be the answer to all of your problems. Think again… 

For a start, automating all testing just isn’t possible. While you can automate simple and repetitive tests, manual testing will be required for others. 

Related reading: The challenge of getting started with Selenium. 

Fundamentally, Selenium requires developers. That inevitably creates a separation between developers and the rest of a QA team. Have a look at the example below of test automation using Selenium.

 

selenium screenshot

All of this reveals a need for test automation without coding. 

An alternative that doesn’t require coding 

Approaches to automation can be adopted for which scripting skills aren’t necessary. This course of action can be described as intelligent automation, and its attractiveness lies not just in the reduced need for technical knowledge, but in the fact that it opens test automation to people who can bring more of a business focus to the task.

Capgemini World Quality Report 2021-22

Using a codeless alternative to Selenium can provide a far better experience. Software teams are increasingly adopting such approaches, as they can help get rid of the problems that arise with automation using Selenium. 

A visual, codeless approach like Leapwork’s brings more team members into the testing process. That’s because they can set up and execute test cases, and maintain and troubleshoot them easily. 

Testers can use an intuitive, visual language to automate test cases—they can take control of the test automation process without relying on developers or learning to code. 

 

leaptest-selenium-excel

 

Leapwork uses Selenium ‘under the hood’: instead of having to grapple with all that code, you only see what you actually need to. 

Although some might point to Selenium IDE as a way of performing test automation visually—it allows a record and playback method of making tests—it still requires a good understanding of Selenium WebDriver code. It’s usually used by HTML-savvy experts. 

Read more: Selenium IDE vs Leapwork 

The benefits of a no-code approach 

A no-code approach to Selenium can dramatically shorten test cycles. 

All of the requirements needed for Selenium are taken care of automatically with Leapwork—you don’t need to worry about them. Instead of spending the time and resources on maintaining scripted tests and putting out fires, you’ll be able to focus on increasing test coverage and test quality. 

If you want to learn more about Leapwork and see how it differs from Selenium, download our whitepaper! 

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