What's New In Selenium 4 : Advantages & Release Details Included
Selenium is created as a set of tools that helps different user groups. It is an Integrated Development Environment. It is built to support rapid application development. One of the advantages of using this is, that it does not require in-depth programming knowledge. As we are aware of the recent release of selenium 4, let’s take a look at what’s new in selenium 4 in features and updates.
What's New in Selenium 4?
Originally, selenium 4 was designed to replace selenium 3. But in doing so, some outstanding features have been added to it. A brief description of the newly added or advanced features of selenium 4 is discussed below: Changes have been made to relative locators. In the updated version, the elements can be shuffled and sorted according to the element’s bounding client rect. In this, the elements are sorted based on the distance between them.
- The users also have the power to find the relative locator by using any selector.
- They have also released a part of the ChromDevTools. This feature is called the Network Interceptor which allows the testers to extinguish responses to the requesters.
- Selenium 4 has also made it easier to work with multiple applications and tabs in one test flow. A new or tabbed window can be opened and created through it.
- With Selenium 4 one can work on more tabs or windows at the same time. Through this, we can navigate a different URL and go through a different window at once.
- All the Selenium web drivers, IDE, and gird have been updated to correlate with the latest changes made.
- A flexible and user-friendly Application Programmable Interface is provided by the selenium web driver.
- The selenium grid has made it easy to test. With it, one can run tests on more than one machine.
Advantages of Selenium 4
With the replacement of selenium 3, there are also upgraded advantages in selenium 4 that can build up and improve our testing environment. Some of the advantages are mentioned below:
- Augmented grid of selenium
- Enhanced documentation
- Intensified selenium Integrated development environment
- New features in ChromeDevTools
- Selenium test automation
What to know about Selenium 4 Jar File?
Selenium 4 can be downloaded and it can be configured in other IDE too. Upgrading to Selenium 4 becomes easy if we know languages like Java, Python, and Ruby. It requires preparing the test code, upgrading the dependencies, and overcoming the deprecated messages and errors. We can configure selenium 4 in Eclipse and use selenium web driver Application Programmable Interfaces. The following are the steps that demonstrate the configuration of Selenium 4 with the Java Integrated Development Environment, Eclipse. In this, the selenium 4 jar files are added to the project of Java.
- Visit the official website of the Selenium web driver.
- Scroll down to the Selenium clients and web driver language bindings section.
- Under it click the download hyperlink and make sure that a stable version is downloaded.
- A popup notification box shows the download of the web driver.
- The download is in the form of zip files.
- Extract the zip files and save them in the desired location.
- Add the jar files to the folder where the selenium 4 folders are saved.
- Then start the Eclipse and create a new project in it.
- Make the required changes in the project.
- Create a new package and a new class in the project.
- Then create a web driver instance in the project.
- Select the properties option by right-clicking on the project.
- Then add the external jar files from the selenium 4 folders that you saved.
These steps explain Selenium WebDriver 4 Setup using Java and Eclipse using the latest stable Selenium 4 JAR files.
Selenium 4 Release Details
We are aware that the latest version of selenium is selenium 4.10. This was released in the early months of 2021. It was announced by Simon Stewart, founder of selenium about the selenium 4 release at a selenium conference in Bangalore almost two years ago. With the release of the new version came the release of some powerful advantages and features that contributed vastly to the field of technology. These are network interception, basic authentication, and digest authentication.
Selenium 4 Release Details
Selenium is an automation testing tool. It is freeware too. Through it, the testers can use network and performance testing tools and proceed with their testing. It supports a control flow mechanism which is why it can be used in the improvement of testing. It also supports add-ons and new features that work with different web browsers. However, the JSON wire protocol has been disapproved by Selenium 4. Also, the support for Opera and PhantomJS is removed from Selenium 4. The most recent version of selenium released is selenium 4 Beta 1.
If one is starting from the desktop or mobile application, then one must use the Selenium web driver API because it uses browser automation to run tests. Selenium IDE is developed to test the Selenium test cases. It supports different web browsers. It saves time by recording the user’s action in the browser. This also helps in learning the script syntax of selenium. Through the selenium grid, one can run any test cases on any machine or operating system combinations.
Conclusion
This was an insight into what’s new in selenium 4. The beta versions of it have also started being developed. The new version of selenium is better than its older versions. But this is the case with every software. The software is upgraded and improved to provide its users with some new features or to improve its existing features and to fix its bugs.