Lightning talks and Selenium

My first demo of Selenium was at a lightning talk at STARwest in 2005. I was watching it with one eye and watching the time keeper with the other. Not out of rudeness; I was actually hosting the event. Grig Gheorghiu did the demo and even blogged about it .

At Citcon Sydney last year, I did an informal tool survey and Selenium came out tops by a long way. We had some lightning-style talks at the session but nothing on Selenium.

Last month, Google hosted all-Selenium lightning talks and posted them for viewing. I just had a chance to see them all, and there are some great changes to Selenium coming over the next 2 years.

I’m very excited by Selenium IDE changes (an upcoming blog topic), and the Grid seems to be a great step forward in speeding up “slow” functional tests on the web. It was interesting to see that Selenium is also Google’s tool of choice, running over 50,000 tests daily! It was also good seeing some things I’ve only read about.

One thing that surprised me was seeing the principal Grid author presenting. Philippe Hanrigou gave an entertaining talk that I would have liked to quiz him about. I met him at Agile Open California last year and we had several conversations, but none about automation or Selenium! Next time perhaps…..

Now chances are high that my next lightning talk may be on Selenium….