What Are The Top Challenges Faced in Selenium Automation?

Whenever there is a discussion about automation testing, the one tool that automatically comes to testers mind is selenium. The reason is simple, it is a free, open-source, fast, and reliable tool for automating tests for web applications. But just like other tools, there are certain challenges associated with this tool also, that makes automation testing quite challenging. Let’s try to understand some of these challenges in detail.

What is selenium automation testing?

Selenium automation testing is a software testing method where the selenium framework is used to automate the test. Selenium is an open-source test automation tool that enables developers to automate tests for web applications. Selenium is not just a single tool rather it is a suite of software that contains several components containing selenium IDE, selenium grid, and selenium WebDriver.

Selenium’s latest version is Selenium 4 Alpha 5. As per the latest version of this tool, several changes have been made to the components of the suite. Selenium WebDriver is now Selenium W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standardization. Selenium Grid is now much improved. Also now Selenium IDE is updated to New Selenium 4 IDE (Chrome and Firefox).

What are the top challenges faced in selenium automation?
Let’s take a look at some of the major challenges of this framework:

Inability to handle pop windows and alerts

One of the challenges of this framework is its inability to record pop-ups which makes it difficult for developers to automate the process. Also, this framework is unable to handle windows based alerts. This framework can handle a web-based alert with the help of the switch to method.

Provides false positives and false negatives

Another common challenge with this tool is the problem of flaky tests. A flaky test is a situation where the tool provides false positive and false negative reports. When you are running hundreds or thousands of tests with the help of this tool, some chances are there that test results can come out successful, if it is not successful (false positive), or test result can come out negative even when it is not negative (false negative). This results in flaky tests and poses a great challenge in software testing.
 
Inability to switch browser windows

Another challenge with this framework is that it creates problem while multi-tab testing or cross-browser tests. Many developers believe that some elements of the web app work in one browser but not in other browsers.
 
Difficulty in handling dynamic content

Websites and web apps have dynamic web elements, which are not visible on the site when you visit it for the first time. Usually, the content of the web page varies from one visitor to another. This poses a great challenge to automation testing. But with the help of explicit wait command, this issue can be handled easily.
 
Inability to test mobile apps

One of the drawbacks of this tool is that it tests on web apps and websites. You cannot use this tool to automate tests for mobile apps. This makes the scope of this tool very limited. However one can use the Appium framework to test the content on the native mobile OS.

Conclusion:

Automation testing tools have helped testers all across the globe to save extended man-hours, reduce efforts required to test monotonous tasks, and eliminate human prone errors. One of the standard tools that come to every tester’s mind whenever we talk about automation testing is selenium. But some challenges are faced by testers while using this tool for test automation. Leverage automation testing from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to achieve high-quality software.

About the author: I am a technical content writer and I write articles on various IT related topics. In this article, I have tried to share my views on the top challenges faced in selenium automation.