What’s new in Selenium 4?

Automation Testing Interview Help, Selenium 4, Selenium WebDriver / June 30, 2021 / 75 Comments

Selenium 4 Features

In this article, we will look at the new exciting features and improvements introduced in the latest version of Selenium WebDriver i.e. Selenium 4. Selenium WebDriver has now adopted W3C standard web driver protocol. So, instead of JSON Wire Protocol, native support of W3C standard is provided.

Let’s have a look at Features of Selenium 4

 1. Switching windows or tabs

Selenium 4 provides a new api NewWindow which creates a new tab or new window and automatically switches to it. Using this feature, a user can open a URL in a new tab along with the existing tab.

2. Minimize window

Minimizes the window of current browsing context. Minimize window hides the window in the system tray.

3. Relative locators

This feature help you locate elements that are nearby other elements.

  • Relative locators are as follows:
    • above
    • below
    • toLeftOf
    • toRightOf
    • near

findElement method now accepts a new method withTagName() which returns a RelativeLocator.

NOTE: Java bindings now support with(By) instead of withTagName() allowing users to pick locator of their choice like By.id, By.cssSelector etc. This feature landed in Selenium4 – beta3

Let us consider the below example for understanding the relative locators.

above()

This method returns the WebElement, which is present above to the specified element.

This method returns the WebElement, which is present below to the specified element.

below()

toLeftOf()

This method returns the WebElement, which is present to the left of specified element.

toRightOf()

This method returns the WebElement, which is present to the right of specified element.

near()

This method returns the WebElement, which is at most 50px away from specified element.

4. Optimized Selenium Grid

In selenium 4, a new architecture for selenium grid is introduced to remove issues which occurred during installation and configuration, also during the connection between the hub and node machine.

  • Node / Client:   It is used to execute tests on individual computer systems. There can be multiple nodes in a grid.
  • Hub / Server: It is the central point from where it controls all the machines present in the network. It contains only one hub which helps in allocating test execution to different nodes.     

However, in selenium 4, there is no need for a setup to start hub and nodes individually once the user starts the server, the Grid automatically works as both nodes and hub.

It also supports advanced tools like Azure, Docker, AWS etc.

5. Deprecation of Desired Capabilities

Desired capabilities were used in test automation scripts to specify the test environment such as browser name, version, operating system) for execution on the Selenium Grid.

In Selenium 4, capabilities objects are replaced with Options. Now we just need to create an Options object, set test requirements, and pass the object to the driver constructor.

In order to define browser specific capabilities, below are the Options objects:

  • Chrome : ChromeOptions
  • Internet Explorer : InternetExplorerOptions
  • Firefox : FirefoxOptions
  • Microsoft Edge : EdgeOptions
  • Safari : SafariOptions

6. Modifications in the Actions Class

To simulate input actions from mouse and keyboard on specific web elements, we used Actions class in selenium.

In Selenium 4, several new methods have been added in Actions class.

click(WebElement)

This newly added method in Actions class replaces moveToElement(onElement).click()

It is used to click on a certain web element.

clickAndHold(WebElement)

This newly added method in the Actions class replaces moveToElement(onElement).clickAndHold().

It is used to click on an element without releasing the click.

contextClick(WebElement)

This method will replace moveToElement(onElement).contextClick(). It will perform the right click operation.

doubleClick(WebElement)

This method is added to replace moveToElement(element).doubleClick(). It will perform a double click on an element.

release()

This method used for releasing the pressed mouse button was initially a part of org.openqa.selenium.interactions.ButtonReleaseAction class. Selenium 4 onwards has been moved to Actions class.

7. Selenium 4 IDE

New version of IDE is available with below features:

  • Browser support has been improved in the new version. Now with a new version, any browser vendor can easily plug into the latest Selenium IDE.
  • CLI Runner will be based on NodeJS, not the HTML-based runner, and it supports the parallel execution from which it provides the report with the total number of test cases passed/failed along with execution time taken.

8. Enhanced Documentation

The enhanced selenium documentation helps understand how new features in Selenium 4 can be used in real time automation testing. Selenium 4 documentation describes all the aspects of Selenium Grid 4, Selenium IDE, and WebDriver W3C protocol.

Is protractor going to get deprecated??

Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor is a Node.js program built on top of WebDriverJS.

The last big release was Protractor 7.0 in which there was just a security improvement and few dependencies were updated. Although they switched to recent NodeJS, no significant improvements, no new methods were added at all.

The Angular team plans to end development of Protractor at the end of 2022. Why?

What alternatives to Protractor do we have?

  • WebdriverIO: As of today, WebdriverIO is the best WebDriver implementation in JavaScript. It provides features like react selectors, shadow ‘dom’ support. Unlike Protractor, WebdriverIO receive constant updates, it has a very active community of developers.
  • Selenium WebDriver: Selenium is an umbrella project for a range of tools and libraries that enable and support the automation of web browsers. Learn more about Selenium WebDriver at Dezlearn’s Selenium WebDriver course.

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