The implementation of Firefox Driver has been changed in Selenium 3.0. Starting with Firefox version 47.0+, we need to use separate a driver that will interact with the Firefox browser similarly to ChromeDriver. The new driver for Firefox is called Geckodriver.

The Geckodriver provides the HTTP API described by the W3C WebDriver Protocol to communicate with Gecko browsers, such as Firefox. It translates calls into the Firefox Remote Protocol (Marionette) by acting as a proxy between the local and remote ends.

In this section, we will see how to configure and use Geckodriver for Firefox in our tests. First of all, we need to download the Geckodriver executable from https://github.com/mozilla...

The ChromeDriver works similar to the Geckodriver and implements the W3C WebDriver protocol. We saw how to set up and use ChromeDriver in Chapter 1. In this section, we will focus on the ChromeDriver options to run tests in headless mode, use mobile emulation, and use custom profiles.

Similar to Firefox, we can run tests in headless mode with ChromeDriver. This makes Chrome tests run faster and tests run more efficiently, especially in the CI (Continuous Integration) environment.

We can run Selenium tests in headless mode by configuring the ChromeOptions class as shown in the following code snippet:

@BeforeMethod
public void setup() {
 System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver"...

In order to execute your test scripts on the Internet Explorer browser, you need WebDriver's InternetExplorerDriver. Similar to Google Chrome and Firefox, we need to download the IEDriver Server executable from https://www.seleniumhq.org/download/ for Internet Explorer.

The IEDriver server then uses its IEThreadExplorer class, which is written in C++, to drive the IE browser using the Component Object Model framework.

Now you are all set to write test scripts that run on the Internet Explorer browser. The following is the code that instantiates InternetExplorerDriver:

public class SearchTest {

    WebDriver driver;

    @BeforeMethod
    public void...

Microsoft Edge is the latest web browser launched with Microsoft Windows 10. Microsoft Edge was one of the first browsers to implement the W3C WebDriver standard and provides built-in support for Selenium WebDriver.

Similar to Internet Explorer, in order to execute test scripts on the Microsoft Edge browser, we need to use the EdgeDriver class and a standalone Microsoft WebDriver Server executable. The Microsoft WebDriver Server is maintained by the Microsoft Edge development team. You can find more information at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-edge/webdriver

Let's set up the Microsoft WebDriver Server and create a test for testing the search...

With Selenium 3.0 and WebDriver becoming the W3C standard, Apple now provides SafariDriver built into the browser. We do not have to download it separately. However, in order to work it with Selenium WebDriver, we have to set a Develop | Allow Remote Automation option from Safari's main menu, as shown in the following screenshot:

This is as straight forward. The following is the test script using the Safari Driver:

public class SearchTest {

    WebDriver driver;

    @BeforeMethod
    public void setup() {

        driver = new SafariDriver();
        driver.get("http://demo-store.seleniumacademy.com/");
    }

    @Test
  ...

In this chapter, you have seen some of the major implementations of WebDriver that are widely used in the industry. We looked at some of the key configuration options for each browser and how to use them for custom profiles and mobile emulation. The underlying technology for every driver is JSONWire Protocol, which is fundamental for all the implementations. In the next chapter, we will learn how to use the Java 8 Stream API and Lambda functions with the Selenium WebDriver API.

1. What is the significance of WebDriver becoming W3C Specification?
2. True or False: WebDriver is an interface?
3. Which browsers support Headless testing?
4. How can we test mobile websites with Chrome?

You can check out the following links for more information about the topics covered in this chapter:

• Read the WebDriver Specification at https://www.w3.org/TR/webdriver/
• You can find more details about GeckoDriver and its capabilities at https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver
• Read more about the ChromeDriver capabilities at http://chromedriver.chromium.org/capabilities and mobile emulation at http://chromedriver.chromium.org/capabilities
• Read more about EdgeDriver capabilities at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-edge/webdriver