The Selenium suite consists of four main components: IDE (Chrome/Firefox extension for rapid prototyping), WebDriver (the core programming interface for robust automation scripts), Grid (distributed testing infrastructure), and Remote (protocol for communicating with remote machines). Each component serves a specific purpose in the automation ecosystem.
IDE is like training wheels—great for learning. WebDriver is like learning to ride properly. Grid is like assembling a team of cyclists to cover more ground faster.
We have 500 test cases that take 5 hours to run on one machine. We need them finished in under 1 hour for our CI/CD pipeline. Which Selenium component do we use?