What are the differences between selenium 3 and selenium 4?

Selenium 4 has come up with some advanced features that will further scale up the efficiency of the Selenium tool. The newer version provides more comprehensive documentation that will be of immense help to developers and testers in order to carry out their testing activities more efficiently. The drawbacks of Selenium 3 have been strategically covered and updated in the Selenium 4 version, thereby making it more likable and productive. In this article, you will get to know the differences between Selenium 3 and Selenium 4.

Following are the differences between Selenium 3 and Selenium 4 in a point-wise format:

1. Relative locators: In selenium 3, find Element commands are used by testers to locate web elements in the purlieu of another element, such as to the left/right/below/above of an element.

In selenium 4, testers are allowed to use relative locators in order to find web elements that are relevant to other elements in the DOM (Document Object Model).

2. The emergence of Chrome DevTools: Unlike Selenium 3, Chrome DevTools protocol is supported by Selenium 4 through its DevTools interface. Chrome development properties such as Application cache, Performance, Profiler, Network, Fetch etc., can be utilized by testers. Chrome DevTools provide APIs that help developers and QAs edit code and identify anomalies faster without the execution being interrupted.

Network strengths and myriad geographical locations are replicated through the APIs in Selenium 4, which, in turn, helps QAs to run geolocation testing and thus test websites in throttled network conditions (2G, 3G, 4G, Edge).

3. Advanced Selenium Grid: In selenium 3, when there is a need to perform automation testing, the Hub and Node(s) need to be initiated individually. It supported the processes that are Distributor, Session Map and Router.

In Selenium 4, a single jar file is used to consolidate the Hub and Node. Both the Hub and Node are activated, once the server starts. The processes supported here are Node, Distributor, Session Map and Router. It also provides the required support and enhanced GUI for Docker.

IPv6 addresses are also supported by the Selenium 4 Grid and the user interaction is facilitated with the Grid via HTTPS protocol. It also supports DevOps-friendly tools such as Azure and AWS.

4. Improved Selenium IDE: In Selenium 3, there were limited features that came with Selenium IDE, which was available as a Firefox extension.

In Selenium 4, the scope has broadened as Selenium IDE is used for widely used browsers such as Chrome (as a Chrome extension). Soon, it is going to become available as a Web extension or plugin for MS Edge. Selenium 4 IDE is equipped with a SIDE (Selenium IDE Runner) tool, through which .side project can be executed on a Node.js platform. Cross-browser tests can run by SIDE Runner in the form of parallel testing on a cloud Selenium Grid.

5. Selenium WebDriver standardization: In Selenium 3, the communication is facilitated by test code and the browser in question because of which there will be an irrelevant extra task of API requests being encoded and decoded via the W3C protocol.

In Selenium 4, the W3C standardization is utilized by WebDriver. Most of the browser drivers such as geckodriver, chromedriver do the same, wherein the browser can be directly communicated with the WebDriver, which in turn keeps away the need for JSON Wire Protocol in its entirety. In this manner, stable cross-browser tests can be expected via Selenium.

Selenium is an open-source, test automation tool that has become an important automation tool in the software quality assurance world. This selenium testing tool consists of a different set of tools which include Selenium WebDriver, Selenium RC, Selenium IDE, and Selenium Grid, all of which have different features.

Selenium testing tool is a lightweight tool and is developer-friendly, commonly used for automating web applications.

Test automation using selenium webdriver with java, automation testing can be used in any operating system environment such as Windows, Linux, and OS X and has been first developed by Jason Huggins in the year 2004.

Conclusion: If you are looking forward to implementing Selenium testing for your specific project, then do get connected with a globally acclaimed software testing services company that will provide you with a tactical testing strategy along with professional support that is in line with your project specific requirements.

About the author: I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. I strive to provide well-researched information on the leading market savvy technologies.