Ever wonder whereSelenium(the testing fabric, not themineralyou get from feed clams) came from? Here ’ s a little history of the technology, from its origins more than a decade ago as a proprietary tool through the present era of Webdriver.

ThoughtWorks and The Origins of Selenium

Selenium originated in senior days - by which I mean 2004 - as a creature for examine web applications. It was developed by Jason Huggins, a coder at ThoughtWorks.

That Selenium originated at ThoughtWorks is occupy. While no one in 2004 was talking about Agile base, ThoughtWorks was the spot whereMartin Fowlermade his career. Fowler went on to become one of the major mentation leaders behind the migration to microservices. While Fowler can ’ t lead credit for Selenium, it seems fitting that the creature, which is an important part of machine-driven testing for DevOps-inspired workflows today, originated in the like property from which the Agile infrastructure gyration later emerged.

Open Source Selenium

At first, Selenium was apply only internally by ThoughtWorks employees. But that changed by the end of 2004, when the tool was open-sourced.

I don ’ t cognize exactly when Selenium became an open seed tool, since the earliest emails touch to the open-sourcing do not appear to exist anymore (at least not publically). But it was apparently no afterwards than late November 2004. That ’ s when the first extantSelenium development emailswere being exchanged, and people be talking aboutcheck out the Selenium codificationvia Subversion.

Selenium at this point stay an imperfect tool. It suffered from some bugs that affected testing for certain browser environments. And thanks to the inefficiencies of the waterfall-style software evolution practices of the clip, bug fixes were slow to reach exploiter. As a Selenium usernotedon November 29, 2004:

Yet the simple fact that Selenium had become open source was a big mass. It aid to popularize the creature, since anyone could use it for complimentary. Anyone could also contribute to it to help expand its feature set.

Concluding but not least, the move placed Selenium within the apace growing stack of open germ applications at the time. The early 2000s be the era when companies like Red Hat were evidence that Linux and other software that was yield away for free could have huge commercial value. It was too when open source web browser, namely Mozilla Firefox, and tidings processors, such as OpenOffice, were giving closed-source tools a run for their money. And open source web browsers like Apache HTTPd had already held a majority of grocery share for years. Against this backdrop, open-sourcing Selenium entirely create sense.

Selenium Grows Up

Within a year of its liberation as an open source tool, Selenium had evolved significantly. By October 2005, developers bedreaming up ambitious & quot; grand plans & quot;for the tool. They envisioned bestow sophisticated new features that would extend Selenium beyond its original charge as a canonical web app testing tool. Those included things like support for test frame applications and cross-platform testing.

The evolution of Selenium during this period was facilitate by the fact that Jason Huggins, the original Selenium developer, displace in 2007 to Google, where he was able to continue work on the creature.

Selenium Meets Webdriver

But ThoughtWorks was not out of the picture yet. Also in 2007, another ThoughtWorks employee, Simon Stewart, develop another testing tool for web apps called WebDriver.

WebDriver & # x27; s debut signaled a desire for features that be not useable in Selenium. And for a little time, the two tool contend.

But in 2011, the projects were merged to form one web testing tool to dominate them all. The combination of Selenium and WebDriver became Selenium 2.0, whichdebutedin July 2011. The new liberation paired the WebDriver APIs that are familiar to Selenium exploiter today with the original Selenium lineament set.

Selenium Present, Selenium Future

The demands of automated testing continue to change. It ’ s a safe bet that Selenium will, too.

One important trend that is probable to shape Selenium development going forward is the demand for ever-more efficient automatize testing. The Selenium ecosystem has volunteer some automation options for a while thanks to Selenium Grid and former tools. But as the DevOps motility increases pressure on development teams to test and deliver software yet faster than they already do, techniques for speeding tests, such as by offloading them to the cloud and lam them in analog, will remain key.

Shift-left testing has also turn an important part of the automated testing conversation. Selenium is already good suited for shift-left examination, which refers to the recitation of performing tests earlier in the development rhythm, in order to place bugs before they slow ontogenesis. But Selenium users hold to choose to occupy advantage of Selenium in the right way for this purpose.

Optimizing Selenium today is easier thanks to a rich ecosystem of plugins and integrations that simplify the task of working Selenium into the software delivery line. Since evolution workflow are now more complex than they have e'er been, and will likely turn yet more complex over time, the ecosystem border Selenium is poised to rest essential in helping Selenium to remain relevant for modern coating testing.

Want to learn how to use Selenium?Sauce Labs now offers Selenium training via online and on-site instructor-led family that are focalise on have you up to speed promptly. Our category are small and interactive, with a combination of lecture, demos, and hands-on exercises -. 

Selenium Conference 2016 London tickets arenow on sale- join hundreds of other Selenium expert this November 14-16. Chris Tozzi has worked as a journalist and Linux systems executive. He has peculiar interests in open beginning, Agile infrastructure and networking. He is Senior Editor of substance and a DevOps Analyst at Fixate IO.