There is a lot of confusion about the WebDriver W3C standard: what does it mean, what do I need to do, and how urgent is it? Marcus will cover several steps you need to take in order to stay up-to-date with the latest version, as well as some of the history the project has gone through, which led to this historic standard. Code will be made simple, examples will be shown, and myths will be dispelled.

1. SELENIUM 4 & THE W3C
STANDARD
February 23rd, 2019

2. 2
It’s no big deal

3. What We’ll Cover
3
● A Story of People
● What is a standard?
● The WebDriver W3C standard
● How to Adopt
● Grid & IDE
● Call to Action

4. A STORY OF PEOPLE

5. 5
SeConf
London
April 2012

6. 6...we stopped caring after 2014. We’d won.

7. 7

8. THE W3C STANDARD

9. WHAT IS A STANDARD??
9@mmerrell

10. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
10
You came here for a Latin lesson, right?
De facto—“In fact”
True for practical reasons or consensus:
“most of us think this is a great idea!”
De jure—“In law”
A formal, official status or agreement:
“this is now codified as a requirement”
“This test tool seems to work better than
the others. Let’s use it!”
“The browser vendors have now agreed
to unify how Selenium is implemented”
@mmerrell

11. BEFORE THE EARTH COOLED
● Initially developed to test a time & expense system
● Selenium debuted in 2004
● WebDriver followed in 2007
● Projects combined in 2008
● HP was still “king”
● Selenium took advantage of certain “common interfaces”
within the browser
○ Injected JavaScript into the responses coming back
from the server
○ Server-side socket in Firefox was left open from
experiments with Distributed XPCOM
● Browser vendors/developers barely knew these things
existed
@mmerrell

12. A FORCE THAT COULDN’T BE IGNORED
12
As Selenium/WebDriver merged and slowly gained critical mass,
legacy testing tools disappeared
Browser vendors took notice
@mmerrell

13. SELENIUM EMERGES AS THE STANDARD
13
2012
Proposal
Working Group
forms
2018
Recommendation
Adoption in
principle
2016
Editor’s Draft
Specifics take
shape
2019
Selenium 4
Full adoption of
the standard
@mmerrell

14. THE STANDARD
14
● The web is different now
● Infrastructure is different now
● For many years there was a real risk that this whole thing could be
“shut down” by Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple
● Going from “hack” to “standard”
● The “connective tissue” between Selenium and the browser is now
maintained by a standards committee, collaborating with the experts
who created the browser
The W3C github repo is the meeting point between the Selenium Project
and the browser vendors.
@mmerrell

15. IN A PERFECT WORLD
15
● All at once:
○ Selenium 4 is released
○ All browsers work with Selenium 4 immediately
○ Everyone updates their capabilities
○ Legacy code is deleted
○ We hold hands and sing
@mmerrell

16. REALITY IN EARLY 2019
16
● We’re close
● Jim Evans’ Tweet stream on overall compliance
● You still have to set an “experimental” flag to enable
W3c with Chrome
● Undiscovered bugs all over, no doubt
● Safari is behind (48% compliance)
@mmerrell

17. WHY SHOULD I SWITCH NOW?
17
● To utilize the newest browsers
● To stay ahead while you still have control
● Browser vendors will start turning off support for the “legacy”
protocol shortly after Selenium 4 is released
● If you’re using the legacy version, you will be “stuck in time” on
older versions of the browsers/drivers
● Be the leader in your org by using the most up-to-date
technology
● Go have a look! It’s open-source and ready for engagement!
https://github.com/w3c/webdriver @mmerrell

18. W3C AND MY TESTS

19. WILL MY TESTS STILL RUN?
19
● In short, yes!
● Switching now gives you:
○ Full advantage of W3C capabilities
○ Future proof your tests against
incompatibility issues
● There will be bugs
● REPORT THE BUGS
@mmerrell

20. AN EXAMPLE IN JAVA—BEFORE
20@mmerrell

21. AN EXAMPLE IN JAVA—AFTER
21@mmerrell

22. PYTHON—BEFORE
22@mmerrell

23. PYTHON—AFTER
23@mmerrell

24. SLIGHT CHANGES TO CAPABILITIES
24@mmerrell
platform platformName
browser browserName
version browserVersion
DesiredCapabilities.chrome() ChromeOptions
Last intended version of Selenium 3x is 3.141.59

25. WHAT’S NEXT?
25
• Follow the progress of the Selenium 4 release!
https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/projects/2
@mmerrell

26. 26@mmerrell

27. REVAMPED GRID & IDE

28. SELENIUM GRID
28
● Improved UI
● Container-ready
● Improved observability
● More thread-safe
● Hub and Node no longer separate
@mmerrell

29. SELENIUM IDE TNG—RECORD & PLAYBACK
29
● Supports Chrome & Firefox
● Smart locator technology
● New plugin system/ecosystem
● CLI Runner
● Code export coming soon!
https://www.seleniumhq.org/selenium-ide/
@mmerrell

30. WHAT ABOUT APPIUM?
30
...it’s ready already
@mmerrell

31. CALL TO ACTION

32. SOME STATS
32
● 434 Open Issues
● 111 Open Pull Requests
● 116 Releases
● 418 Contributors
● 25,503 Commits
...all we’re missing is you!
@mmerrell

33. 33@mmerrell
JUST STOP

34. STRAIGHT FROM HUGS
34@mmerrell

35. SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY
35@mmerrell
“Open source is
under threat from
multiple fronts”
—Karen Sandler

36. OUR LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING
36@mmerrell

37. OUR LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING
37@mmerrell

38. Q&A

39. SPECIAL THANKS
● Alyssa Lydon
● Samantha Coffman
● Jim Evans
● Jason Huggins
● Simon Stewart
● Dave Haeffner
39@mmerrell

40. NEED SOME MORE INFO ON SELENIUM 4?
• Selenium State of the Union - SeConf India
• Blog post - DZone
• SeleniumHQ - Selenium Documentation
40@mmerrell