The Top Challenges Faced in Selenium Automation

Serena Gray
3 min readSep 13, 2021

When automation testing is discussed, selenium is the first tool that testers think of. It is an open-source, free and reliable tool that automates web application testing. Automation testing can be challenging, just as with other tools. Let’s take a look at some of these challenges.

What is selenium automation?

Selenium automation testing uses the selenium framework to automate the test. Selenium, an open-source tool for automating web application tests, is called Selenium. Selenium is more than a tool. It is a collection of software components that contain selenium IDE and grid.

Selenium 4 Beta 5 is the latest version of Selenium. The suite has undergone several updates as of the most recent version. Selenium WebDriver now supports Selenium W3C standardization. Selenium Grid has been greatly improved. Selenium IDE has been updated to New Selenium 4 (Chrome or Firefox).

What are the top challenges faced in selenium automation

Let’s look at the main challenges facing this framework.

Incapacity to deal with pop windows and alerts

This framework’s inability to capture pop-ups makes it difficult to automate. This framework cannot handle windows-based alerts. With the help of the switch method, this framework can handle a website-based alert.

False positives and false negatives

Flaky tests are another common problem with this tool. Flaky tests are situations where the tool gives false positive or false negative results. You can run hundreds to thousands of tests using this tool. If the test is unsuccessful (false positivity), it can still be successful. Flaky tests can lead to a lot of problems in software testing.

Inability to switch browsers

This framework also has the disadvantage of causing problems when testing across multiple tabs or in cross-browser scenarios. Many developers believe that certain elements of the web application work only in one browser, while others do not.

Difficulty with dynamic content

Websites and web applications have dynamic elements that are invisible when you first visit the site. The content of a web page can vary from one person to the next. Automation testing is often faced with this problem. This issue can be easily solved with explicit wait commands

Inability to test mobile applications

This tool has a few drawbacks. It tests only on websites and web apps. This tool cannot be used to automate mobile app tests. This limits the tool’s capabilities. The Appium framework can be used to test content on native mobile OSes.

Conclusion:

Automation testing tools allow testers around the world to save time, cut down on repetitive tasks and eliminate human errors. Selenium is a standard tool that testers think of when they talk about automation testing. However, testers face some challenges when using this tool to automate test automation. To achieve high-quality software, leverage automation testing provided by a next-gen software testing service provider.

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Serena Gray

I work as a Senior Testing Specialist at TestingXperts. I am a testing professional accustomed to working in a complex, project-based environment.