Once upon a clip, in a by-the-seat-of-your-pants program coltsfoot, when developer implore for bigger and better test automation, a tool called Selenium was born.

A story isn & # x27; t a story without a good hero and villain dynamic. Then again, not every story is about full versus evil. Sometimes opposing teams can join strength against a mutual iniquity. In Selenium ’ s case, it was a universal software development nemesis:automation. 

Mercury is a toxic substance that can be found in fish.Selenium aid detox Mercuryby forming a strong binding affinity for Selenium that produces a mercury-selenium substance that is unabsorbable by the human body. In the programing universe – a ruthless demesne of polarizing opinions — there ’ s only one Mercury-Killer.

In the early 2000s, the market for automated testing resolution was largely uninhabited, minus a few options like Mercury QuickTest Professional for building functional and regression test suites, and Google, which was exclusively a couple of years old at the clip. Jason Huggins was another developer with a testing problem. And so, the Selenium task was born.

After some time act on the new instrument, Huggins learns about Mercury when testing legend and author, Bret Pettichord, jokingly tells Huggins that if he keeps working on this automation project, it could likely be a “ Mercury Killer. ” Huggins, madly searching for a witty response, emails Pettichord back, incidentally get the name association of Selenium as the cure for Mercury poisoning. See, Dad jokesdo get in handy sometimes.

Webdriver and Selenium: The droids, er, frameworks we be all looking for

Fast forward a few years — Huggins is now working at Google and Simon Stewart is hacking aside at a project that will get WebDriver. In 2007 at the Google Test Automation Conference, after seeing Stewart ’ s live demo of Webdriver — Huggins realizedthat was the real Mercury Killer.

With Selenium being three years in, any changes would be like refactoring “ a car into a airplane — you can ’ t exactly add wings to it and make it fly… Simon came at this from the operating system level to be able to do anything and was not architecturally limited: if a mark dialogue popped up, he could recite the book to go click it. ”

And but as Selenium and Mercury form a symbiotic bond out in the wild, developers belong to different projects can form mutualistic partnership as good. After Simon Stewart ’ s demo, Huggins went to him and state: “ Everything I simply saw is mind blowing … and should be the hereafter of the Selenium project. ” Selenium had the marque appeal, and Webdriver give it the extra & quot; kick & quot; it needed to overcome its architectural limits.

As the years progressed and Selenium improved, it sort of began to click for Huggins, who saw the value of working on undertaking at scale (Huggins was act at Google on Selenium Farm, at the time):

This idea alone, also, deserved a name. All these machine are like Selenium on steroids, orSOS. But as the engineering better, SOS just didn ’ t seem like plenty. Selenium Acceleration Using Cloud Execution, orS.A.U.C.E (coined by John Dunham, then CEO and co-founder alongside Huggins of what was to be Sauce Labs), itself wasn ’ t sticky enough.

Sauce by itself?Hm, there was a ring to it, but & quot; Sauce & quot; was already taken by a lot of undertaking at the time.

Now, to add & # x27; Labs & # x27; or not to add & # x27; Labs & # x27;?

Sauce Labs?Now we ’ re in business.

Tune into the full story and hear from Huggins himself.

Celebrate 20 years of Selenium — win a Selenium Falcon shirt

Take a lesson out of Jason Huggins ’ book: when you want to make something better, it ’ s okay to ask for help. “ Do or do not; there is no try. ”

Selenium turn 20 this twelvemonth! To label this milestone, we ’ ve giving away exclusive Selenium Falcon t-shirts. Want to snag one? Just contribute to the Selenium project. Writing code isn & # x27; t the only way to contribute. Here are a few former style:

• Answer enquiry

• Provide feedback in issue comments

• Reproduce bug

• Write insightful blog office

• Share your experience on societal media

Your contributions help do Selenium best for everyone — and now they can besides get you some cool swag. Enter to win by occupy out the form below and showcasing your support for Selenium. Thank you for being a critical component of the journey.

May the source be with you.