Comparing Selenium 3 vs. Selenium 4

 Selenium is a popular framework for UI automated testing that is now widely utilized in the industry. Due to its open-source status and countless features that make the testing process quicker than with other tools, Selenium has significantly impacted the automated testing market. Testers of all platforms are using Selenium and are benefiting from the features offered by it. You can become well-versed in Selenium after completing a quality certification for automation testing.

The differences between Selenium 3 and Selenium 4, their respective architectures, and the benefits of Selenium 4 will all be covered in this essay.

Selenium 3 Architecture

JSON Wire Protocol, or JavaScript Object Notation, is supported by the Selenium 3 architecture. The key distinction between Selenium 4 and Selenium 3 is that Selenium 4 does not support the JSON Wire Protocol.

JSON Wire Protocol uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to transfer data from the client to the server. A Selenium client sends the request, which is received by JSON Wire Protocol over HTTP and secured by the browser driver. The server then returns a response, which the client then receives.

You will understand the working of Selenium architecture after finishing an automation training course online.

Selenium 4 Architecture

Selenium 4 enables direct communication between the client and the server. WebDriver Language Bindings and Selenium Client are the 2 parts of the Selenium 4 Client. Browser Drivers represent the server.

Selenium Client in Selenium 4 issues a request to execute a command. An important function of the code library known as WebDriver Language Bindings is to drive activities. Clients send requests to Browser Drivers, which receive those requests and respond when an automation test script runs on the Web browser.

The architecture, where each language has its own distinct bindings, includes the Selenium Client and WebDriver Language Bindings as key components. By using bindings, many languages can use the same commands. For instance, a command created in Java has also been created in other languages such as C#, Python, Ruby, etc.

WebDriver drives every browser using the built-in automation support of the browser when talking about Browser Drivers and Web Browsers. Chrome Driver is one example of a browser driver that manages the Chrome browser.

Selenium 4 differs from Selenium 3 because RemoteWebDriver is the parent of ChromiumDriver, while ChromeDriver and EdgeDriver extend it.

Selenium 4 Advantages

1) Use of WebDriver Manager: Selenium 4's use of WebDriver Manager offers the biggest benefit. With this release, downloading the most recent executable for each browser is no longer necessary. You can create code in a single line to download the most recent version for any given driver. WebDriverManager.chromedriver.setup();

2) Relative or Friendly Locator: Numerous locators are available to locate a web element on the internet, and Selenium 4 has introduced additional relative locators. A few of these include toLeftOf(), toRightOf(), above(), below(), and near().

3) Take a screenshot of a particular Web Element: Selenium 3 allows us to take a screenshot of the complete page, whereas Selenium 4 allows us to take a screenshot of a particular Web Element.

4) Stability: You can obtain stability with the support of Selenium 4.

You should enroll in automation certification courses online to learn browser automation with a practical approach.

Selenium 3 Vs. Selenium 4

The Remote Web Driver is a direct extension of the Chrome Driver class in Selenium 3. But in Selenium 4, the Chrome Driver class is extended to include the Chromium Driver, which includes several built-in access methods for the developer tool. JSON Wire Protocol is a crucial component of Selenium 3 communication and serves as the main method of communication between the test code and the browser.

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Final thoughts

Selenium 3 and Selenium 4 are distinct from one another in their own ways. Selenium 4 offers new and lovely features by utilizing a web driver. This eliminates the need to download an executable; instead, you can simply use the WebDriverManger class to set up the driver. Additionally, Selenium 4 offers a variety of relative locators that can be used to locate web elements on websites.

Enroll in an online automation certification training online to better understand browser automation.