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A Smattering of Selenium #95 was a link roundup by Adam Goucher, published June 26, 2012. The “95” is the post’s sequence number—not a Selenium version. Its ten links ranged from web and mobile testing to cloud systems, project scaffolding, and debugging.
What was A Smattering of Selenium #95?
Goucher opened the post: “Ok twitterverse. After 2 weeks of very few links a day you explode.” The roundup captured a burst of links and testing conversations circulating in 2012. It is useful as a historical snapshot, not as current Selenium news or a guide to which tools to use today. Read the original roundup.
What links did the roundup include?
- Testing JSF with Arquillian and Selenium: A presentation about testing JavaServer Faces applications, which Goucher wryly described as something that “apparently will save the world.”
- GhostDriver: almost 50%: An update on GhostDriver, a project that had gained momentum at SeleniumConf 2012. “Almost 50%” is wording from the linked item’s title; the roundup does not establish what was measured, so it should not be treated as a verified statistic.
- Building and profiling high performance systems with Iago: A Twitter Engineering link that Goucher explicitly noted was not browser-based; the systems it served did not need browsers.
- Testing geolocation with Capybara + Selenium + Firefox: A technique for geolocation testing that Goucher said he had not thought to try.
- Run your Selenium tests in the cloud with TestingBot: A Java-oriented tutorial and the roundup’s clearest example of cloud-based browser test execution.
- Taming the Mobile Beast: A presentation deck; Goucher tentatively suggested it might be from Velocity.
- Netflix open sources Asgard cloud deployment smarts: A link about Netflix’s cloud deployment tooling.
- django-skel: A Django project scaffold offered as one way to start a new project.
- Debugging with Fiddler: A piece about proxy-based debugging. Goucher said BrowserMob Proxy was then common in Selenium contexts and that Fiddler was becoming more common in manual testing.
- SQL Fiddle: A web tool for constructing SQL schemas. Goucher cautioned that letting a web app construct a schema might be unwise.
Those descriptions reflect the roundup’s own blurbs. They do not establish whether the linked projects or services remain available, secure, maintained, or suitable today.
What Selenium-related themes stand out?
Testing across web features and environments
Several links connect directly to browser testing: the JSF presentation, the Capybara/Selenium/Firefox geolocation technique, and the Java cloud-testing tutorial. Together they show the range of problems developers were discussing, from testing an application framework to exercising location-dependent behavior and running tests away from a local machine.
#1 Best Overall
Not every link was about browser automation
Iago is the clearest counterexample. Goucher included it as an interesting systems-engineering link while explicitly noting that its work did not need browsers. The roundup mixed Selenium-adjacent material with broader engineering links rather than limiting itself to automation tools.
Debugging, mobile, and project setup
Fiddler and BrowserMob Proxy represented debugging through a proxy, while “Taming the Mobile Beast” pointed toward mobile testing concerns. The django-skel and Asgard links widened the focus further to starting Django projects and deploying cloud infrastructure. These are clues to the interests of the 2012 testing community, not recommendations based on current comparisons.
Rank #2
Is Selenium 95 a version?
No. In this title, 95 identifies the 95th installment of A Smattering of Selenium. The post is dated June 26, 2012, and the number does not refer to Selenium WebDriver, a browser, or a software release.
How should this roundup be used today?
Use it to trace historical discussions or follow its original references for context. Do not infer present-day status, security, capabilities, pricing, or reliability from the roundup alone. For current Selenium release information, consult the project’s downloads page and release history; those are separate from the 2012 post and can change over time.
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