Selenium IDE an Introduction

Selenium IDE or Selenium Integrated Development Environment is the simplest tool in the Selenium suite.

• It is a firefox plugin.
• Easy to install.
• Quickly creates test through record and playback.
• Autocomplete mode helps to enter commands quickly and to avoid invalid commands.

To use Selenium IDE to its full potential it is recommended that you have prior knowledge in HTML, Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript.

Selenium for a Beginner

Selenium is an automated testing tool. It is very similar to HP's QTP. The main difference is that it is for web based applications.

Selenium can be used for web applications across multiple browsers and platforms.

Selenium is a testing suite. That means it is not just a single software, but composed of tools for several needs. It includes:

• Selenium IDE
• Selenium Remote Control
• Selenium Web Driver
• Selenium Grid

Selenium Remote Control and Selenium Web Driver are integrated and called as Selenium 2. Do you what is Selenium 1? It is Selenium Remote Control alone.

Formats for Browsers

The simple video format is not supported in all the browsers while using Html 5. 

See the list of browsers and formats to be used below:

MP4 (H.264 & AAC): safari 3.0+, Chrome 5.0-, iOS 3.0+, Android 2.0+, IE 9.0+

WebM: Chrome 6.0+, Android 2.3+, Firefox 4.0+, Opera 10.6+

played if plugins are installed in Safari, iOS and IE

Ogg ( Theora and Vorbis): Chrome 5.0+, Firefox 3.5+, Opera 10.5+, Safari with plugin

More Video Options for HTML 5

To add control for your video just add an attribute.

<video src= "video.mp4" controls> </video>

You can even build your own customized controls:

<video src= "video.mp4" autoplay> </video>

This will make your video to autoplay

<video src= "video.mp4" preload> </video>

This will download the video but not play it. Preload should be preferred only if the video is the sole attention of the website as this option can effect the speed of the website.

To make sure browsers do not preload the video:

<video src= "video.mp4" preload = "none"> </video>

If you want to make the video play again and again, that is play as a loop:

<video src= "video.mp4" loop> </video>

And if the video fails to load, just put posters attribute so that an image will be displayed: 

<video src= "video.mp4" poster= "alternate.jpg"> </video>

( poster attribute usually causes problems in iOS 3 version)

HTML 5 video

The video tag is similar to an html image tag:

<video src= "video.mp4"> </video>

If you need to specify dimensions for the video, add attributes as for image:

<video src= "video.mp4" width= "600" height="270"> </video>

You can also define the dimension via CSS.

Another advantage is that if the dimension given is not compatible for the browser, the browser simply centres the video within the box, so no more worry about messing.

Advantages of HTML 5

Completely open source.

Code failure if any is easy to determine as we are not using any third party plugin.

Browser optimization done directly in the browser.

Generally faster as not depending on external plugins.

Will work in any browser that supports it ( no need to install like a plugin by the user).

More natural and easier to use.