WebDriving Test Automation

Introduction

WebDriver shows growing popularity for many years and at least for past 4 years it is number 1 player on the market of web test automation solutions. The growth hasn't been stopped yet. The WebDriver exposes open interface and it's server side API is documented in W3C Standard. Thus, a lot of people can implement their own back-end API and expand technology support. So, WebDriver can become more than another option among web test automation tools list. It may become (if not yet) the most wide spread test automation platform so that the term of UI test automation may be replaced with another term like Web-Driving. In this post I'll describe where the WebDriver solution "web-drives" us to and where are the areas of further growth.

The Future of Test Automation Frameworks

It's always interesting to know the future to be able to react on that properly. It's especially true for the world of technology when every time we get something new, when something which was just a subject of science fiction yesterday becomes observable reality nowadays. Automated testing is not an exception here. We should be able to catch proper trend and to be prepared for that. Actually, our professional growth depends on that. Should we stick to the technologies we use at the moment of should we dig more into some areas which aren't well-developed at the moment but still have big potential? In order to find an answer to that question we need to understand how test automation was evolving, what promising areas are. Based on that we can identify what should we expect next.

So, let's observe test automation frameworks evolution to see how it evolves and where we can grow to.

Test Automation tools: trends

While making decision which tool is more suitable for test automation we should always take into account the popularity of each specific tool. Why? Because firstly it's about people. What's the point in taking tool which doesn't have users? Thus, we'll have to invest some money into their learning which is extra expences. Secondly, the more popular tool is the more materials are available either in internet or in some other materials. So, we should take a look at some trends to identify which tool is growing with it's popularity and which one is going to be a history.