31. Introduction to Selenium WebDriver

Selenium WebDriver alias Selenium 2  is a test tool that allows you to write automated web application UI tests in any programming language against any HTTP website.

Selenium WebDriver is the latest and most popular flavor of Selenium which allows the test developers to write tests using their favorite language to test on different browsers.

Pre-requisites for Selenium WebDriver:

•          Selenium IDE 
•         Java 
•          Eclipse IDE 

What is Selenium WebDriver ?

·                     Selenium WebDriver allows you to write Automation tests in any supported programming language (say Java). 

• Selenium WebDriver is also known as Selenium 2.
• Selenium WebDriver is an open source and free tool.
• Selenium 2 can run Selenium RC command and the concept is known as Backed Selenium.
• Selenium WebDriver has support for almost all browsers
•  Selenium WebDriver has support for several programming languages like Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Pearl, Javascript and PHP)

Are there any cases where you have to use Selenium-Server with Selenium-WebDriver ?

Yes. As we have to use Selenium-Grid concept for distributing our tests over multiple machines and run. In order to run the browser on a remote machine, we have to use Selenium-Server for communicating with the browsers on remote machines and running the tests on remote machines.