Selenium WebDriver is an open source automation tool for test driving browsers. People sometimes find the API daunting and their initial automation code brittle and poorly structured. In this introduction, Alan Richardson provides hints and tips gained from his years of experience both using WebDriver and helping others improve their use of the tool. Alan starts at the beginning, explaining the basic WebDriver API capabilities—simple interrogation and navigation—and then moves on to synchronization strategies and working with AJAX applications. He covers tools and location strategies to find elements on web pages using CSS and XPath. Alan provides an introduction to abstraction approaches which help you build robust, reliable, and maintainable automation suites.
Hands-on exercises require a laptop computer with Firefox, Firebug, and Firepath installed. You will write code! Coding exercises require an IDE (IntelliJ), Java SDK, and Maven. Prior to the session, follow the Getting Started Guide at http://seleniumsimplified.com/get-started. Come ready to learn.