Record & Playback

Many test automation tools provide record and playback features that allow users to interactively record user actions and replay them back any number of times, comparing actual results to those expecting.

Advantages of Record & Playback:

1. Easy for beginners i.e. It requires little or no software development
2. Takes very less time to automate

Disadvantages of Record & Playback:

1. Reliance on these features poses maintainability problems. Maintenance is high in other words (i.e. Relabeling a button or moving it to another part of the window may require the test to be re-recorded.)
2. These options incorrectly records some activities often.
3. Reusability of the recorded tests is very low.
4. Unnecessary steps gets recorded few times.
5. Objects might get duplicated. (i.e. The same UI object will get identified twice)
6. Objects are unorganized and hence making the test very difficult to maintain.
7. The data is not parametarised hence coded values are present in the recorded code

Out of all the selenium tools, Selenium IDE tool has the Record and Playback feature.