Selenium IDE – The Long Kiss Goodnight

Several months ago, we were tasked with creating tests using Selenium. That came in the guise of the IDE. At first, it was an uphill struggle, as the documentation was pretty poor. But, once I found the right places to look and the right questions to ask, it began to come together.

Since then, I’ve been able to create dozens of functional tests and validate large sections of code in a short amount of time. I’m no expert with the IDE, but I can put things together pretty quickly these days. And with the use of SelBlocks, decisions making and loops made the scripts pretty powerful.

But with the change to plugins in Firefox, the IDE is all but dead. It came to a screeching halt in v55 and it doesn’t look like anyone will take up the mantle of updating it. And that’s a pity because it’s been a real beneficial tool.

Now the question comes, what’s the replacement? We could certainly try to use Selenium with Javascript, even though I’m not a developer. There are some professional packages to pick from, but the cost is pretty hefty. I thought iMacros might be useful, but after digging deeper, you have to get the Enterprise version to get basic feature.

Or perhaps use something like Katalon Studio. Katalon looks quite robust, but I have to admit, I’m not sure where to start with it. I can understand some of the commands, as they look similar to Selenium IDE, but I haven’t quite got the hang of the object model. Hopefully that will come with more trial and error, since I’m a little lost at the moment.

I keep checking to see if there is a real replacement, but so far, nothing really fills the void.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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