“A Smattering of Selenium #62” is a historical link roundup by Adam Goucher, published on September 29, 2011—not a Selenium release announcement or current compatibility guide. Its links and commentary focus on test design, selective automation, maintainable test suites, and software delivery practices. The “62” is the roundup’s issue number.
What “A Smattering of Selenium #62” is
Goucher introduces the post with the line “All opinions, all the time…” It is an authored collection of links and observations from 2011, rather than a systematic review or a statement of official Selenium policy. Read the original post on the Selenium project blog.
The main theme: design tests deliberately
The roundup points readers to a sequence of articles about designing tests for automation, including follow-on discussion of automated test design and GUI automation. Across these links, the recurring question is not simply how to automate a test, but how to choose and structure tests so automation is useful.
Automation is a choice, not a goal in itself
One featured link is titled “Not Every Test Should be Automated!” That inclusion makes selective automation an explicit part of the roundup: it pushes back against treating automation as an end in itself. The post does not provide a quantified rule for which tests to automate; it presents the question as a matter for judgment.
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Maintainability matters
Goucher highlights Cem Kaner’s paper on improving the maintainability of automated test suites, drawing particular attention to strategies 1, 2, and 5 on page three. The emphasis is practical: an automated suite needs to remain understandable and manageable, not merely produce results.
Related ideas in the roundup
Dependency injection and dependency inversion
The post distinguishes dependency injection from the dependency inversion principle. They are related software-design concepts, but the roundup’s point is that they should not be treated as interchangeable terms.
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Prioritizing automation work
A linked article uses the metaphor of “taking on water” to frame how teams prioritize automation work. In the roundup’s context, this connects test automation to practical constraints and choosing what to address first.
Harold’s Corollary to Knuth’s Law
Goucher notes Harold’s Corollary to Knuth’s Law and specifically says it is aimed at unit tests rather than functional tests. That distinction matters: a point made about unit-test design should not automatically be applied to a different test layer.
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Continuous deployment and exploratory testing
The collection also links to an argument about why continuous deployment matters and to The Little Black Book on Test Design, which the post describes as intended for exploratory testing. Goucher suggests some of its ideas might transfer to automation; that is his observation, not a claim that the book is an automation manual.
How to use this post today
Read it as a snapshot of conversations among software testers and developers in 2011: how to design automated tests, decide what merits automation, and keep suites maintainable. Its historical links and opinions can still provide context, but the roundup does not establish present-day browser support, Selenium version compatibility, or the current status of every linked resource. For current technical guidance, consult current Selenium documentation rather than relying on this archived link collection.
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