Welcome to our first explore-along (just like sing-along!) post. To get the best out of our selenium series it is recommended that you follow closely and work along. It is as simple as that!
In the land of Magic Meadows, before we see some real magic happening, it’s time we set the environment for it. Sounds a bit technical, isn’t it? But no worries, it is quite easy as Selenium IDE comes as a Firefox plug-in.
So all you need to get started with the installation process is an active internet connection.
(Those who already have Mozilla Firefox browser on your system, it’s time to sit back and relax until step 1 is completed. Scroll down a bit to get going from the most awaited Step 2)
Step 1: Installing Firefox
Download the latest version of Firefox from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Once the Setup file is downloaded, it looks something like this.
So go ahead and click on the exe file. Once the extraction reaches 100%, Mozilla Firefox Setup Wizard will pop up. Click on the “Next” button.
You can very well go ahead with the Standard as your set up type. It’s completely left to your convenience. I am choosing “Standard” and clicking Next.
A summary of the location where Firefox will be installed is shown. Just click on the “Install” button.
The installation will take place,
Click on “Finish” and launch the Firefox browser to get started.
Step 2: Installing Selenium IDE
Once the Firefox browser is launched, go to https://www.seleniumhq.org/download/. Scroll down until you reach the Selenium IDE section. Click on the latest version number as shown below. (Please note that the version number that you are seeing might be different from the one in the snapshot here as 2.9.0 is the latest at the time this post is created.)
Once you click on the version number, due to the security settings, you might see a pop-up. Click on the “Allow” button to proceed with the installation.
The download happens as shown,
When the download completes, click on the “Install” button.
Upon the completion of the installation, click on “Restart Now”.
Once Firefox restarts, we can launch Selenium IDE in one of the ways,
- Use the combination of Alt+Ctrl+S.
- Click on the Se icon in the toolbar if it is available already.
- You can always go by the conventional method of launching it from the Firefox Menu. Just press Alt if you don’t see the menu and it will pop up. Click on Tools -> Selenium IDE or Tools -> Web Developer -> Selenium IDE.
Now let me show how our Selenium IDE looks when it is launched.
Step 3: Installing Firebug
A few words on Firebug: It is a free and open-source web browser extension for Mozilla Firefox. We are going to take its advantage for identifying and inspecting the Web Elements of the application under automating using Selenium. It is totally fine if you do not understand a word of what I was talking about. Just go ahead and install Firebug for now. Everything will fall in place as we explore deeper.
Time for some action: Launch Firefox and navigate to https://getfirebug.com/downloads/ for downloading firebug.
Click on the download link based on the compatibility with your current Firefox version.
Clicking on download link will take you to Firefox Add-ons page. Just click on “Add to Firefox” in the Firebug section.
Firefox will download the Add-on. Upon completion, a dialog box would appear in order to install Firebug. Click on the “Install” button.
Once the installation is done, a notification saying “Firebug has been installed successfully” can be seen. Even if this doesn’t appear, there isn’t anything to worry.
And also, there is no restart of the browser required after installing Firebug.
You must be wondering how to launch this add-on. It’s quite simple and there are two ways for it,
- Press the function key, F12
- Click on the Firebug icon which will be available in the right corner of the Firefox toolbar.
Firebug will usually launch at the bottom of Firefox window and this is how it will look,
That’s all for today. You are all set for some visual treat but that has to wait a bit.
See you again in another post where we will be exploring more about the options in Selenium IDE. Have a nice day!