About SideeX - HackMD

--- title: About SideeX tags: English --- [中文版](https://hackmd.io/@sideex/history-zh) # About SideeX :::success ## **SideeX 1** # The Vision: To Faithfully Record and Replay Like a Parrot In mid 2015, [SideeX](https://sideex.io) (++S++elenium ++IDE++ ++EX++tended) was created by Prof. Shin-Jie Lee and his [lab members](https://sideex.io/contributors/) in NCKU, Taiwan. The vision is: "*To faithfully record and replay like a parrot*". SideeX Team initially started by improving the automation capabilities of the Selenium IDE at that time. In July 2016, the first generation of SideeX (version 0.6.0) was released as an open source Firefox Add-on under Apache 2.0 license. It was presented as an extended version of Selenium IDE 2.9.1.1, developed based on XUL, with a number of expanded automation features, including auto-wait series (AJAX wait, page wait and DOM wait), and a great improvement of auto-generating commands for unnamed windows, mouseover, mousedown, scrolling, dragdrop, and keyboard inputs. Later, two new commands, editContent and chooseCancelOnNextPrompt, were introduced in SideeX. At the end of 2016, the last update (version 0.8.0) of the first generation was released. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9rUMBJX.png" style="width:60%"> *A Snapshot of SideeX 1* ::: :::success ## **SideeX 2** # Became the Bases of the New Official Selenium IDE and Katalon Recorder ## Hundreds of Thousands of Testers Run SideeX Code At the end of 2016, Mozilla announced that they would not accept XUL-based Firefox Add-ons anymore, but WebExtensions-based Add-ons instead. Therefore, SideeX Team rewrote and redesigned the GUI based on WebExtensions API together with a number of new features, including parallel running of multi-SideeX on one desktop, playing all test suites, saving all selectors of each recorded command, running on Chrome and Firefox. In September 2017, the second generation ([SideeX 2](http://sideex.org)) was released. In the same month, SideeX 2 was adopted by [Selenium](https://www.seleniumhq.org/) as the [base](https://seleniumhq.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/selenium-ide-tng/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Selenium+%28The+Official+Selenium+Blog%29) for developing the new Selenium IDE, and soon the [source code](https://github.com/SideeX/sideex) was committed to the [official Selenium IDE Github repository](https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium-ide/tree/v0.1), which was officially introduced by Simon Stewart, Selenium Lead Committer, in [SeleniumConf Berlin 2017](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9OoXIZobdk&feature=share). Later, SideeX 2 was also adopted as the bases of [Katalon Recorder](https://github.com/katalon-studio/katalon-recorder), [Qualys Browser Recorder](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/qualys-browser-recorder/abnnemjpaacaimkkepphpkaiomnafldi), and [Autify Recorder](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autify-recorder/jggibfiodonlmkjbmlooehabjldddbgn). At the end of 2017, more than 200,000 web testers around the world run SideeX code. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/I9DIzbD.png" style="width:60%"> *A Snapshot of SideeX 2* <img src="https://i.imgur.com/pauRbae.png" style="width:20%"> *Logo of SideeX 1 and 2* The official web site of SideeX 2: http://sideex.org ::: :::success ## **SideeX 3** # A Quantum Jump: Comprehensive and Intensive Revision The vision of SideeX Team did not change - *To faithfully record and replay like a parrot*. At the end of 2017, SideeX Team decided to create the third generation ([SideeX 3](https://sideex.io)) that was expected to be more robust, extensible and fully-fledged. They started to outline the new project road map by incorporating the lessons learned from the previous generations with the newly set goals. Subsequently, SideeX 2 underwent an intensive program of architecture & UI redesigns, code refactoring, and new features development. The lead committer was Yun-Wen Lin, Fong-Yi Huang, and Han-Hsuan Tsai. In June 2019, SideeX 3 was released. It was a comprehensive and intensive revision of the previous generation with a quantum jump by its superior functionalities, accuracy and efficiency. Thanks to the new architecture, SideeX 3 was able to systematically support live cross-browser testing where users can directly and seamlessly replay the recorded test cases over modern browsers and platforms. Currently, more and more functions are being actively developed and continuously delivered. <img src="https://i.imgur.com/X5muZXc.png" style="width:60%"> *A Snapshot of SideeX 3* <img src="https://sideex.io/static/media/sideex_logo.2728ffac.png" style="width:20%"> *SideeX 3 Logo* The official web site of SideeX 3: https://sideex.io :::