Can Selenium be used for Testing ?

If you are a Testing Engineer, you must have definitely heard about Selenium. Selenium is a de-facto testing framework for web applications.

It is a portable framework for testing web applications. It provides a test domain-specific language Selenese to write tests in a number of popular programming languages like Java, Pearl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Scala. Selenium is open-source software under Apache 2.0 License, completely free to download by the web developers.

With over 2.7 billion smartphone users across the world, it’s no surprise that the mobile app industry is thriving.

There were 1.35 million tablet users, which have now almost doubled and there is a long way to go. If you, take your eyes off from the mobile screen, you will realize everyone else also glued to their mobile screens.

According to statistics, the average Indian checks their phone every 12 minutes. 10% of Indians checks their phone every 4 minutes.

You might be also reading this article from the phone.

According to a statistics report for 2019, The App Store has 2.2 million apps for download and The Google Play Store has 2.8 million apps for download.

In an era of so much dependency on Mobile Phones can we use Selenium for testing mobile applications also? Can we use our Selenium skills with mobile testing also? Well, there is a twist in the story just keep reading.
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Selenium for Mobile Testing

Just like Mobile and Mobile Applications have become a vital part of our life. In the same sense, Mobile testing is a requirement for testers who want to expand their knowledge.

Nowadays, a pattern that follows is every website has a matching Mobile App.

So, The Answer is “Not Really”, but don’t panic. There is a detailed explanation for this.

You cannot use Selenium for Mobile Testing but there are frameworks that are based on Selenium especially created for mobile automated testing.

These Frameworks are:

• Appium
  
• Selendroid

You can still use Selenium for Mobile WEBSITE Testing. Please Note Selenium is developed only for testing Web applications either Desktop or Mobile.
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What is Appium?

Appium is the most popular mobile application testing framework which can be used to test all native, hybrid and mobile web apps for IOS, Android.

You know, what is the most special thing about Appium is? It is Cross-platform, Cross-technology and Cross-browser Mobile UI Testing Framework.

What this exactly means? By cross-platform, cross-technology and cross-browser I mean that a test script written for IOS application can be used for Android application also. It supports running applications on physical devices, emulators, simulators and real browsers.

Appium supports parallel testing but only for Android Apps.
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What is Selendroid?

Selendroid, as the name suggests, is “Selenium for Android”. Selendroid is the mobile testing framework designed especially for Android. It also supports parallel testing and scaling. Selendroid also supports native and hybrid apps. Unlike Appium, Selendroid is only for Android.

It is a very powerful tool which can interact with multiple frameworks simultaneously.

One of the most exciting features of Selendroid is “Hot Plugging”. Which means we can plug another device without restarting the test.

Selendroid also supports Dynamic Extendibility. It allows you to edit the code during run-time. This means you can edit and change the code while the test is executing.

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