When you have to test the UI and how it behaves when certain actions are performed, you need something that can automate the browsers. This is where Selenium comes to the rescue. If you have to test APIs and not the frontend (UI), I would recommend going with other libraries that support HTTP Requests. Selenium is good only when you have no choice but to run the steps on a browser.
Visual Studio Test Professional is best for .NET and C# based development, which is what 90% of our developers and projects do. It is an integral part of the CI/CD pipeline for our custom made Enterprise resource planning tool. It also works very well with Azure providing seamless integration to way more functionality.
Recognize Adobe Flash and MS Silver Light elements without additional help
Detect and locate Java applets ingredients
Having the "Wait-till-Displayed" or "Wait-till-Present" as a built in Web Driver function instead of requirement for writing loops and defining expliccit wait, visiblewait, invisiblewait, etc.
We love this product mainly because of its high customization abilities and the ease of use. Moreover, its free and can be learned easily through online communities and videos. The tests are more consistent and reliable as compared to Manual tests. It has enabled us to test a large number of features all in one go, which would have impossible through manual tests. The reports generated at the end of the tests are really helpful for the QA and the development teams to get a fair view of the application.
As I mentioned earlier, the reason I use Selenium is because there is a fairly widespread community of users, and user support services are at a good level. because the application is open source, it works on many platforms (Windows, Linux, IOS) without any problems. In addition, it gives us a lot of options for writing functional tests. For errors that we receive through the application, we can easily find the reasons for errors in the forums.
Visual Studio Test Professional's overall usability is extremely high quality. It is extremely functional and like all Microsoft products has a user interface that is well designed and is extremely user friendly. Any functionality which I looked for, I was able to either understand immediately or find a user guide online.
Selenium does not have technical support available easily. You have to go through forums to get the information you need. However, there are excellent forums out there that make it easy to troubleshoot. The open-source flexibility makes it difficult to have dedicated support.
My team has always been able to troubleshoot with the help of customer support (and even schedule a virtual meeting!) in a timely manner. The support is provided immediately and with the necessary knowledge to answer/solve any questions/problems I or my team experience.
We did everything we needed to use it. Now we can execute our tests on different operational systems and browsers running few tests simultaneously. We also implemented Appium framework to execute our tests on mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets. We use SauceLabs for our test execution and Jenkins for continuous integration.
At the time of adoption, there were not many other alternatives that were even close to being competitive when it comes to browser testing. As far as I know now to this day, there is still little competition to Selenium for what it does. Any other browser-based testing still utilises Selenium to interact with the browser.
When using Azure Devops, it only has a basic test plan while using the extension, and it is better suited if you only use Azure Devops, but VS test professional provides comprehended test execution and management as most of the developers and testers use Visual Studio to develop their apps and publish their builds.
Generation of detailed finding reports helped in cost savings in regard to direct labor.
Quality Assurance technicians found value in repeating mundane duties that they perform daily. It saved mental energy due to the automation process.
The value was established in high volume usage in setting up meetings as well as new accounts with A/B testing. Also merely cleaning up old test documents by evaluating them and organization or deletion.
Visual Studio Test professional fits right in with the other Microsoft Lifecycle Management tools.
End to end, Development, Test, Deployment and Delivery assures the pipeline is continuous. Visual Studio Test Professional is an integral part of that pipeline.
Familiarity with Microsoft Tools makes usability intuitive, makes it easy to ramp up our Testers.