What are some best practices for using Selenium in software testing?

Certain best practices should be followed when writing Selenium tests. Using these practices can help improve the quality and reusability of your tests. Following are the best practices for Selenium in software testing that will help you write successful Selenium test suites.

• Name test cases or suites appropriately: If specific tests failed during the execution step, it should be simple to determine which features are broken by looking at the test name. These issues are quickly fixed by naming test cases so that they are self-explanatory, so neither you nor your colleagues waste time scrolling through the implementation.


• Use Wait commands: The loading of individual web pages takes some time in web browsers. There are many factors that determine how fast page loads, including network conditions, server issues, and system configurations.

For this reason, testers often use the Thread.sleep() method to pause the automation script. However, this is not an effective approach considering that in certain cases, website may take longer to load than a specified time, resulting in slow test execution. Instead, you can incorporate Waits commands in Selenium.



• Maximize the browser window: By default, Selenium does not launch the browser window in maximized view. This can impact the screenshot of the web page that is usually attached to test reports. Maximizing the browser window right after the test URL is loaded ensures that a screenshot of the entire web page is taken.


• Use the best-suited web locator: With several web locators available, selecting the right one is critical to mitigating the impact on tests due to changes in the user interface. When there is a dynamic situation, Link Text is frequently preferred. ID, Class, and Name are not only the most user-friendly but also the least fragile than other web locators.


• Create a browser compatibility matrix for cross browser testing: Formulating a list of (browser + OS + device) permutations is important since it will help prioritize the combinations for cross browser testing. This formalized list is also referred to as the browser compatibility matrix.