Consider the following: You go to the Apple Store to pick up the latest iPhone. You get home and turn it on, only to find that the screen is defective, the buttons aren’t working, and every one of the built-in apps is glitching. Thanks to QA tools, this is an extremely unlikely scenario. Before the iPhone reaches your hands, both its hardware and software have been tested repeatedly by a Quality Assurance (QA) team.

Selenium IDE is a popular open-source tool for recording and running automated browser tests. You can use it to interact with a browser the way a human would, doing things like navigating to URLs, filling in forms, and clicking on links and buttons. You can also use “assertions” to verify things are working as expected, like checking that elements are present, text is present, inputs contain certain values, et cetera.

Every QA tester knows: time is money. When something breaks down on your website or web application, it can cause major issues for users within minutes. Because you’re constantly working to prevent fires from spreading (or happening at all), it’s important to have numerous strategies at the ready to help you manage your time wisely. One of these QA testing timesavers is called smoke testing. But exactly what is smoke testing?