What is Selenium?
Selenium automates browsers. Primarily it is for automating web applications for testing purposes. Selenium has the support of some of the largest browser vendors who have taken (or are taking) steps to make Selenium a native part of their browser. It is also the core technology in countless other browser automation tools, APIs and frameworks.
Selenium is a suite of tools to automate web browsers across many platforms.
It runs on many browsers and operating system and can be controlled by many programming languages and testing frameworks.
When to use what?
Selenium IDE:
- create quick bug reproduction scripts
- create scripts to aid in automation-aided exploratory testing
Selenium RC/Web-driver:
- create robust, browser-based regression automation
- scale and distribute scripts across many environments