Selenium WebDriver is an automation framework, designed to control a web browser through the browser's native support for automation. The most popular browsers have all integrated the WebDriver protocol, which means you can instrument and control these browsers programmatically.
By providing this programming interface to interact with the browser, you can create test scripts that control the browser just like a normal user would do. You can programmatically instruct to click a button, type a text, scroll a page or any other type of gesture that a user would perform.
Here are some of the key features of Selenium WebDriver and why it's so popular among developers and testers:
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Browser Compatibility
Selenium WebDriver supports multiple browsers, including the most popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. This means your test can run on all these browsers, which means you can do cross-browser testing.
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Programming Language Support:
Selenium WebDriver supports multiple programming languages in what are called bindings. These include Java, Python, C#, Ruby and JavaScript. This flexibility enables you to choose the programming language that best fits your preferences or the requirements of your project. You can find more information on the Selenium Libraries page.
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Integration with Testing Frameworks
Selenium WebDriver can be integrated with popular testing frameworks such as JUnit, TestNG, NUnit, WebDriverIO and more.
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Open Source and Community Support
Selenium WebDriver is open source and has a large and active community of developers and testers. You can find many questions and answers regarding Selenium, together with best practices and instructional videos.
