Selenium WebDriver PROS & CONS Java Tutorial In Details 2023

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Selenium WebDriver PROS & CONS

The initial release of Selenium had four main components. It is referred to as SeleniumRC

Selenium Integrated Development Environment(IDE)
Selenium Remote Control – Selenium(RC)
Web Driver
Selenium Grid

Later, the component Selenium(RC) and WebDriver were merged to form Selenium 2, also known as Selenium WebDriver. Selenium RC has been officially deprecated.

Selenium WebDriver PROS & CONS in Details

WebDriver PROS / Advantage:

Selenium is open-source, so anyone can download and start using it.
It supports multiple languages for creating and executing tests by using a different language like Java, C#,.Net, Python, pearl, ruby, PHP, Javascript.
It is platform independents means it supports various operating systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.
It is used for cross-browser testing like Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Opera browser.
It supports headless browser (PhantomJS, HTMLUnitdriver, Chrome headless)
It can be integrated with an open-source unit testing framework (TestNG, JUnit – TDD, BDD Framework – Cucumber Jbehave Serenity)
Its very lightweight, it uses fewer hardware resources as compared to other testing tools like UFT/QTP.
Available in the form of API.
Easily integrated with the CI-CD process (Jenkins)
It can be executed on the local machine as well as on cloud / Virtual machine/servers (Example – Browserstack, source labs, AWS, Docker)
We can customize the webdriver codebase because the source code is shared.
It Supports Parallel test execution using the selenium grid.
By using selenium, we can perform functional, regression, usability, and UAT Testing.
It Supports to test ajax functionalities and helps to monitor changes in the content without the page load.

Selenium WebDriver CONS / Disadvantage

As its open-source, so there is no direct support.
It is a set of tools for example JDK + Eclipse + Webdriver + TestNG + Firebug + Firepath, so tool setup is more complicated than other tools like QTP/UFT where you configure one tool.
You need to learn to program – No script less / Codeless automation.
Using selenium webdriver, we can not automate desktop application
No default reporting facility for test results.
For doing extra works like test case design, report, build, CI-CD selenium does not provide any API.
It is not supported to automate Scenario like barcode/code captcha.

If you found I have missed mentioning some pros or cons, you can mention that in the comment section.