How To Set Up Selenium IDE

To start with you should  download the selenium IDE add-on into your Mozilla Firefox browser. Now you go to add-on page where you will find selenium IDE in it.Next to selenium you will find option link present in the same line so click on it , there you can set up the options which you want in selenium.Here is the screen shot where you can find the options link.

After clicking on the Options link, below is the screen shot of the pagewhich will be opened.

In options page you will find four tabs

1)General

2)Formats

3)Plugins

4)Locator Builders

In General Tab you will find the following fields in it.

1)Encoding of Test files Text Box which can be seen  in the above screen shot.

2)Default Timeout

3)Selenium Core Extensions text box with a browse button to add your extensions to your selenium IDE

4)Selenium IDE Extensions text box with browse button  to add selenium IDE extensions.

5)Some Check boxes.

• The Encoding of test files has a default value set in it which you  need not change because it runs fine with that.
• The Default Timeout is where you can specify the timeout to execute the command.It means that you can change the default timeout to any value which you think is suitable for that command.Generally the timeout can be defined such that the command gets executed by that time.So make sure to provide the appropriate time in milliseconds which  is the best timeout for that command for that particular website.The timeout varies as per the performance of the your website.
• In Selenium Core Extensions or in Selenium IDE Extensions text box field you can enter the extensions in it.I have added some extensions which were .js files.Here .js file is nothing but JavaScript file. Some of the .js files are User-extensions.js ,datadriven.js and some other which i will tell you in the next post.
• The options which are present in General tab are as follows:

                 1)Remember Base URL.

                 2)Record Assert Title automatically.

                 3)Record absolute URL.

                 4)Activate Developer Tools 

                 5)Enable  Experimental features 

                 6)Disable format change warning messages

                 7)Start recording immediately on open.

• Now let me tell you one thing that by default some of the options will be enabled automatically.By default enabled options are 

                 a)Remember Base URL

                 b)Start Recording immediately on open.

• Remember Base URL: By selecting this option in the selenium  options page you will be able to see the remembered base URL whenever you open the selenium .This feature is useful to make selenium remember the URL which was present in the Base URL field when you recorded the test scenario in selenium.
• Record Assert Title automatically:By enabling this in options page the selenium gets the title from the page which it is recording.Without you doing it manually.It returns page title for recorded page.So you can know the title of the page which you are in.
• Record absolute URL:By enabling "Record absolute URL" the selenium records the exact URL on which you are automating.It will be present in the target section of the table present in the selenium Test case pane.
• Activate developer tools:Activates the developer tools.
• Enable experimental features:It enables different format in which you can record and use that code in your scripts by using selenium RC.           
• Disable format changes warning message:To disable format changes warnings message you need to enable this.There will a pop up message box coming up whenever you change the format of the code which is getting generated while you are recording it.Once you change the format of the code you cannot run that by using Selenium IDE tool.
• Start recording immediately on open:By enabling this ,selenium tool will be in recording mode when you open selenium.

Note:Selenium IDE is the tool which allows record and play when compared to all other selenium tools.