Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

14 Jul 2016, 13:08 p.m.

A Great Explanation of WebDriver and Browser Automation

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2016 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Maja Frydrychowicz's "Untangling WebDriver and the Browser Automation Landscape I Live In" is a delightful, very satisfying read. It covers the difference between the W3C WebDriver specification and Selenium WebDriver, explains their history and future, and uses the Firefox ecology as the concrete browser example so you understand how the components fit together. Also, Frydrychowicz drops in this punchline:

and some day all browsers will implement it in a perfectly compatible way and we'll all live happily ever after.

Upon reading the post, I noted:

I look into the middle distance, more motivated, yet calmer as well. I seem to hear the opening notes of "Fanfare for the Common Man" somewhere behind me. Automated browser testing seemed overwhelming previously, something to be left to Experts who knew this strange tongue. But now I know the power is in my hands; the map gleams and names that formerly confused me now fall into place. My world makes more sense; I have better comprehension of lists like PhantomJS's list of relevant test frameworks and their corresponding test runners. What might not be possible in this fresh new light?

So, if you feel faintly alienated and unmoored when trying to understand automated browser testing, check out the post.

(I know Maja Frydrychowicz because we both participated in the Recurse Center. Want to become a better programmer? Join the Recurse Center!)