History Of Selenium WebDriver

I have assumed that you have already read my past blog entry, Introduction to Selenium WebDriver and here on the quest to find out technical answer of question - what selenium is?

Before getting to the answer, I want you to go though the below info-graphics of history of Selenium WebDriver. 

History of Selenium

Now that you are aware of history, Can you answer what Selenium is?

Selenium is set of tools which includes :-

• Selenium IDE
• Selenium RC
• WebDriver
• Selenium Grid
  
  

So meaning of Selenium depends upon the context, citing the man himself - Simon Stewart here -

Unfortunately, the Selenium project uses a lot of jargon.

• Selenium Core is the heart of the original Selenium implementation, and is a set of Javascript scripts that control the browser. This is sometimes referred to as "Selenium" and sometimes as "Core".

• Selenium RC was the name given to the language bindings for Selenium Core, and is commonly, and confusingly, referred to as just "Selenium" or "RC". It has now been replaced by Selenium WebDriver, where RC's API is referred to as the "Selenium 1.x API"

• Selenium WebDriver fits in the same niche as RC did, and has subsumed the original 1.x bindings. It refers to both the language bindings and the implementations of the individual browser controlling code. This is commonly referred to as just "WebDriver" or sometimes as Selenium 2. Doubtless, this will be contracted to "Selenium" over time.

The astute reader will have noticed that "Selenium" is used in a fairly general sense. Fortunately, context normally makes it clear which particular Selenium people are referring to.

For Reference : Selenium RC architecture

Selenium RC architecture

    On 29th July of 2016, Selenium Committee announced Selenium 3.0 beta  and from now onward Selenium is not going to support Selenium Remote Control[RC] API or Selenium 1.0 API. This means, once Selenium 3 is publicly released you can say Selenium is Selenium 3.0 which is enhanced version of WebDriver and you no longer need to know what Selenium core is or what RC is. You just need to know WebDriver implementation of Selenium.

This is all for now.

Cheers!!

PS:-

All images used in infographics are taken from Google. Selenium RC architecture diagram is taken from official Selenium website.

Information source for infographics :-

1. Paul Hammant post on 10th anniversary of Selenium.
2. Wikipedia-Selenium Page.
3. The Architecture of Open Source Application - Selenium WebDriver by Simon Stewart.
4. Official Selenium Website

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Download and Configure Selenium with Intellij IDE.

             In last post, you have learned how to create project in Intellij IDE. In this post, we will see :-

• Download Selenium JAR
• 
  

  

  Index Page For Selenium Versions

  

  Index Page For Selenium Versions

  

  Index Page For Selenium Versions

  

  Index Page For Selenium Versions

  

  Index Page For Selenium Versions

  Configure Selenium JAR in Intellij IDE

Downloading the Selenium/WebDriver 2:-

            Recently WebDriver committee has pushed WebDriver 3 in the beta, so Selenium 2 (also known as WebDriver) is not readily available for downloading under download section of official website. We have to click on previous releases link to download stable version of WebDriver which was 2.53.1

Selenium Website

        

               After clicking on previous releases, you will be navigated to index page which has enlisted previous version of WebDriver. Click on link 2.53 as shown in image.

Click on link selenium-server-2.53.0.zip to start the download of required Selenium WebDriver.

Download  Selenium

Zip file will start downloading after you click the link.

Selenium Zip file is getting downloaded

      You can find your zip file in your downloaded folder.

Configure Selenium JAR in Intellij IDE:-

           Now that we have required JAR files with us we can configure those files in our Intellij IDE so we can start writing our first Selenium Script. We will create new folder libs in our project as shown in image.

Create new folder in Intellij

Our new project structure is now looks like as below:-

Updated Folder Structure

We will copy all the jars from lib folder of downloaded zip to lib folder created under this project. Note that you have to copy both selenium jars along with all jar present in libs folder of zip file.

Copying Jars from Zip folder to Project Folder.

You can see jars files are reflected under the project.

Updated Libs folder

            We are just one step away from completing our configuration.  We need to add this jars file as Library for the project. Open Module Setting by Right Clicking on Project. Click on ‘+’ button and then click on first option ‘JARs or Directories’. Select the libs folder as directory and then click on OK button. Then Click on OK button.

Open Module Setting in Intellij

Add JARs or directories as dependency in Intellij

Select Libs Folder as dependency

Newly Added Dependancy

Congratulations! You have configured Selenium JARs with Intellij IDE.

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