Recording all of our test cases in Selenium IDE

Question

I want to understand why we don't use Selenium IDE, and we use Selenium WebDriver, even if Selenium IDE is easy to use. 

Why can't we record all of our test cases in Selenium IDE

Comments

Hey @vlncltydalmo even I have the same doubt.

Answer 1

Well @vincitydaimo, for obvious reasons we prefer not to use Selenium IDE. Yes, its easier to record all our test cases but the problem is there is no flexibility. For eg: 

1. If you wan to test a dynamic page where the images or hyperlinks are moving 
2. If you want to click on any Carousel ads in any webpage
3. If you want to scroll down a page and then click on some element

In such cases, your tests will get recorded by IDE. However, when you playback the tests, there will be errors and the test case will be a failure because some element may not be clickable. This is the biggest problem.

Hence, we do it the programmatic approach by calling every single element with its element address (xpath or by tag or by id or css etc) and then perform some kind of action on it. This is done using Selenium WebDriver. 

I hope this was a good explanation. Feel free to ask if there are any other doubts..

For more details about test automation strategies and methodology, You can get a better understanding with the Automation testing online course.