Selenium RC In The Cloud - SauceRC

If you've been looking for an excuse to finally start using Selenium for automated web services testing, or you're a veteran Selenium tester, you'll want to take a look at what the folks at Sauce Labs are doing. They've created a drop-in Selenium RC replacement service called SauceRC. SauceRC allows you to programmatically control web browsers in the cloud using Selenium RC. Here's what their web site lists as the key features and benefits of SauceRC:

Remote control browsers in the cloud:

* API control of mainstream web browsers
* Automate arbitratry browser-based tasks
* Remote control an arbitrary number of concurrent browsers

Execute tests:

* Drop-in Selenium RC replacement
* Verify that a web site/app works correctly using real browsers
* Watch videos of test failures instead of having to recreate them

Record video:

* Video record remote-controlled browser actions
* See how web sites/apps look and act in a variety of browsers
* Verify & document automated tasks were completed

Apparently you can export any recording you make with Selenium (check out this tutorial on using the Selenium IDE) as a Selenium RC script in your favorite language, and then run it using SauceRC. You'll need to install Selenium RC in order to run your scripts on SauceRC. You do this by changing the Selenium RC server setting in your scripts from "localhost" to "saucelabs.com", and adding some info to authenticate with their servers.

And in the end you test your website with a variety of different web browsers and can then verify compatibility for each. I like the concept. Look for our evaluation of SauceRC in the coming month here.