Katalon Recorder: A Trusted Alternative to Selenium IDE

This is a hands-on Katalon Recorder review to help you understand important features like Quick Time-to-Value and Easy Test Management. Katalon is a trusted alternative to Selenium IDE for an increase in productivity.

The software has shifted from process enablers to strategic differentiators. With this shift there is an ever-increasing demand for software to be released faster. But the software is complicated.

Therefore, the speed of development is positively associated with the risks of software defects. Software defects affect shareholder values, which translate into undesirable business risks.

Katalon Recorder and Selenium IDE for Automated Testing

A major component of solving this conundrum is automated testing. Automated testing enables organizations to expose software defects much faster. After being aware of software defects, managers can evaluate business risks and determine if a release is acceptable.

Otherwise, companies must rely on manual testing, which cannot keep up with the development pace. Opportunities are lost, and software becomes a bottleneck instead of a competitive advantage. Therefore, automated testing is a necessary step in the evolution of the software industry.

Software testing is traditionally a manual process. For testers, the industrial adoption of automated testing is a cause for concern. Such a transition must occur gradually because it is not possible for manual testers to become automation testers overnight.

Furthermore, testers must continue to produce value for their organizations while learning automated testing. The appropriate tool must accommodate both the need of organizations for productivity and the need of testers to acquire more automated testing experience.

Websites remain the most popular way to make your business accessible to the rest of the world. When testers look at automated testing solutions for websites, there are two products that they will most likely encounter: Katalon Recorder and Selenium IDE.

In 2016, only one person maintained Selenium IDE, and Firefox 55 was released, which introduced breaking changes that broke the tool. In 2018, the project resurrected, supporting both Chrome and Firefox.

Katalon Recorder is an alternative to Selenium IDE that was introduced around the same time that Selenium IDE stopped working on Firefox. Katalon Recorder is a companion product to Katalon Studio – an advanced codeless automated testing solution. Since its introduction, Katalon Recorder has undergone many improvements that make it even more powerful.

Both tools implement a record-playback approach to automated testing, which strikes a balance between ease of use and getting the job done. The popularity of Katalon Recorder and Selenium IDE is proof of how they manage to solve the problems described above for testers.

However, there are subtle but important differences between Katalon Recorder and Selenium IDE. After interviewing a lot of people, we have identified several value propositions that made our respondents choose Katalon Recorder over Selenium IDE.

Katalon Recorder Vs Selenium IDE

Provides Fast Time-To-Value

In Selenium IDE, you need to create or open a project, and specify the URL before you can start automating your test. These extra steps, while they hardly make a difference at the moment, add up to a considerable amount of friction in the long run.

Every time you close Selenium IDE, you have to perform these steps again. Testers naturally fluctuate between different tasks that do not involve automating, meaning they may experience such minor annoyance repeatedly.

In contrast, with the Katalon Recorder, you can start recording your test immediately after you open the extension. There is no need to create or open a project, nor is there a need to specify a URL. Just press the Record button, then switch to the tab you want to record and start automating.

According to our users, this proves to be a major time-saving feature. Most Katalon Recorder users interact with the extension almost every day, so that may explain why they would value the extremely fast time-to-value.

Helps You Combine Manual and Automation Efforts

Surprisingly, a few of the Katalon Recorder users are not even automation testers. They are manual testers who work in teams that do not apply automated testing. Nevertheless, they have discovered that being able to automate repetitive actions in the browser frees up their time to spend on more valuable activities.

However, parts of their work are necessarily manual, such as exploratory testing. Therefore, their workflows frequently contain some steps that can be automated and others that can’t. This use case excludes Selenium IDE from being a good fit because it cannot execute automated actions on an existing tab.

In Selenium IDE, tests are always executed in a new window. While this is indeed useful for automated testing in order to isolate the test cases, it doesn’t allow integration between manual efforts and automated efforts.

This is another reason why our users love Katalon Recorder. Here, you can execute a series of automated steps on an existing tab. This means that you can execute the automation for repetitive actions in your workflow, pick up from the end result to perform manual actions, and then execute the automation on the end result again.

The fact that Katalon Recorder supports this use case means it can be used for other purposes besides automated testing as well. Indeed, a lot of users are using Katalon Recorder to automate filling forms, playing sweepstakes, and other activities.

Provides an Easy Way To Test Management

Another benefit of being in a product portfolio is the integration with other companion products. In particular, the integration between Katalon Recorder and Katalon TestOps enables users to store, manage, and share their execution results. Testers not only need to assure the quality of the product, but they must also report to the stakeholders about the status of their testing activities.

With Katalon Recorder, once you enable integration with TestOps, uploading execution results is only one click away.

Professionally Motivated Team To Improve The Product

Katalon Recorder is a product in the product portfolio of Katalon, which is a leading automated testing solution provider. While users are looking for an automated testing solution for their projects, one of their major concerns is support and community. If you face an issue, can you count on the team or the community to address that problem?

For the Katalon Recorder, the answer is a resounding yes. Katalon Recorder has a dedicated team that is committed to continuous improvement. Katalon Forum is also a very active community with daily questions and answers. These factors are crucial when choosing an automated testing solution.

Conclusion

Katalon Recorder is a trusted, quick time-to-value browser automation tool with easy test management. It is an effective alternative to Selenium IDE, available on both Chrome and Firefox.

This post explains use cases where automation testers, manual testers, developers who need to test their software or others who want to automate repetitive tasks on the web, can leverage Katalon Recorder as an alternative to Selenium IDE to increase productivity and level up their skills.

Hope this post will give you a good idea of all the reasons to opt for Katalon Recorder instead of Selenium IDE.

What do you think about this article? Please post your feedback/queries in the comments section. We would love to hear from you.