转自：http://www.seleniumhq.org/docs/01_introducing_selenium.jsp#test-automation-for-web-applications
一、是什么？
官网介绍
Selenium is a set of different software tools each with a different approach to supporting test automation. Most Selenium QA Engineers focus on the one or two tools that most meet the needs of their project, however learning all the tools will give you many different options for approaching different test automation problems. The entire suite of tools results in a rich set of testing functions specifically geared to the needs of testing of web applications of all types. These operations are highly flexible, allowing many options for locating UI elements and comparing expected test results against actual application behavior. One of Selenium’s key features is the support for executing one’s tests on multiple browser platforms.
由上可知：Selenium是一套用于支持自动化测试的软件工具集，包括
1） Selenium 2 (又叫做 Selenium WebDriver)
2）Selenium 1 (又叫做 Selenium RC or Remote Control)
3）Selenium IDE
4）Selenium-Grid
selenium projects
二、关于selenium1.0到selenium2.0的演变
1. Selenium 1.0（Selenium RC）
Selenium first came to life in 2004 when Jason Huggins was testing an internal application at ThoughtWorks. Being a smart guy, he realized there were better uses of his time than manually stepping through the same tests with every change he made. He developed a Javascript library that could drive interactions with the page, allowing him to automatically rerun tests against multiple browsers. That library eventually became Selenium Core, which underlies all the functionality of Selenium Remote Control (RC) and Selenium IDE. Selenium RC was ground-breaking because no other product allowed you to control a browser from a language of your choice.
由上可知：Selenium最初由ThoughtWorks公司的一名员工编写，它通过一个Javascript library来驱动浏览器。
While Selenium was a tremendous tool, it wasn’t without its drawbacks. Because of its Javascript based automation engine and the security limitations browsers apply to Javascript, different things became impossible to do. To make things worse, webapps became more and more powerful over time, using all sorts of special features new browsers provide and making these restrictions more and more painful.
由上可知：问题开始暴露
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2. Selenium 2.0（WebDriver）
In 2006 a plucky engineer at Google named Simon Stewart started work on a project he called WebDriver. Google had long been a heavy user of Selenium, but testers had to work around the limitations of the product. Simon wanted a testing tool that spoke directly to the browser using the ‘native’ method for the browser and operating system, thus avoiding the restrictions of a sandboxed Javascript environment. The WebDriver project began with the aim to solve the Selenium’ pain-points.
Jump to 2008. The Beijing Olympics mark China’s arrival as a global power, massive mortgage default in the United States triggers the worst international recession since the Great Depression, The Dark Knight is viewed by every human (twice), still reeling from the untimely loss of Heath Ledger. But the most important story of that year was the merging of Selenium and WebDriver. Selenium had massive community and commercial support, but WebDriver was clearly the tool of the future. The joining of the two tools provided a common set of features for all users and brought some of the brightest minds in test automation under one roof. Perhaps the best explanation for why WebDriver and Selenium are merging was detailed by Simon Stewart, the creator of WebDriver, in a joint email to the WebDriver and Selenium community on August 6, 2009.
“Why are the projects merging? Partly because WebDriver addresses some shortcomings in selenium (by being able to bypass the JS sandbox, for example. And we’ve got a gorgeous API), partly because selenium addresses some shortcomings in WebDriver (such as supporting a broader range of browsers) and partly because the main selenium contributors and I felt that it was the best way to offer users the best possible framework.”
由此：Selenium2.0正式登场
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