Molybdenum is a test tool for web applications. It simulates user interactions in the browser and comes as a Firefox Extension. Therefore it can be installed easily by everybody who is owning a Firefox Browser.
Molybdenum is Open Source and is developed under the Apache License 2.0. Molybdenum is built on top of Selenium Core.
Molybdenum is for everybody, no programming skills needed. It tries to be a self-explaining communication medium between different parties involved in software projects: development, quality assurance, business, infrastructure. Not having a tool mismatch between the people involved eases maintainance of testdata and makes testcase definitions more expressive.
Molybdenum testcases get started via simple link in your browser, they'll run as well from your Continuous Integration System. Because a testscript is just an XML document, it can be linked from your issue tracking system or get sent via email allowing easy reproduction of certain scenarios.
Mission
In general, software testing means to take care, that the software under test meets the requirements. The best way to find out if requirements are met is to ask the requestor itself.
So it is always a good idea that requestors are able to understand the purpose of a test and the test results. If software is developed continuously, additionally it would be nice if the requestor is able to rerun a test or to adapt the test to a changed or new usecase.
What's the conclusion for Web UI tesing?
Requestors for web user interfaces are, in most cases, not developers. If we want to provide a general web ui test tool, we have to accept that the requestor for a web user interface is the common web browser user without any additional knowledge about techniques normally used to build webapplications or web sites.
This means: Using a good web ui test tool, has to be as simple as using a browser.
Exactly this is the mission of Molybdenum: web ui testing made simple
