Selenium 4: Understanding Key Features


1. Enhanced Selenium Grid
  
  The new Selenium Grid comes with Docker support. This will enable developers or testers 
  to spin up the containers rather than setting up heavy virtual machines. Moreover, it is 
  redesigned in a way that will allow QAs to deploy the grid on Kubernetes for better scaling.
  Managing Selenium Grid is now smooth and easy as there will no longer be any need to set up 
  and start hubs and nodes separately. Teams or individual testers
  can now deploy the grid in three modes:
		Standalone mode
		Hub and Node
		Fully distributed
  
2. Upgraded Selenium IDE
  
  Most QA engineers using the Selenium tool suite are familiar with the popular record and
  playback tool – Selenium IDE. This Selenium IDE was earlier available just as a Firefox add-on. 
  Later, it got deprecated with the introduction of the latest Firefox versions. This is because 
  the add-ons in the latest Firefox (ver. 55) were standardized under the Web
  Extension mechanism.With Selenium 4, the IDE is revived and now its add-on is available 
  for major web-browsers like Firefox and Chrome. The add-on for Selenium IDE is now also 
  available on the MS store.The new Selenium 4 IDE provides some notable features    
  like:Improved GUI for intuitive user experience.The new IDE also comes bundled with a SIDE tool 
  aka Selenium IDE runner. It allows QAs to run .side projects on a node.js platform. This 
  SIDE runner also enables individual QAs to run cross browser tests on local or Cloud Selenium
  Grid.Improved control flow mechanism that enables testers to write
  better “while” and “if” conditions. The new IDE comes with an enhanced element locator strategy
  (Like a backup strategy) which helps locate an element in case the web element couldn’t be located. 
  It will result in the creation of stable test cases.The code for test cases recorded using Selenium 
  IDE can be exported in the desired language binding like Java, C#, Python, .NET, and JavaScript.
  
  
3. Relative Locators in Selenium 4
  
  Selenium 4 brings an easy way of locating elements with the inclusion of relative locators. 
  This means testers can now locate specific web elements using intuitive terms that are often 
  used by users like:

		To left of
		To right of
		Above
		Below
	The introduction of this new method in Selenium 4 helps locate web elements based on the visual
  location relative to other DOM elements. One can refer to this source to learn more about the
  implementation of relative locators in detail.
  
4. Improved Documentation
  
  The documentation section has been revamped significantly with a neat UI for navigating to 
  the desired section or page. This will help testers and developers find relevant information they need 
  for a specific tool, language binding, etc.The exhaustive documentation covers information about all 
  tools and APIs under the Selenium umbrella. This will help individual testers (particularly the beginners)
  get acquainted with all the features and prerequisites to get started with automation testing.
  
  
5. Support for Chrome Debugging Protocol
  
  
	Selenium 4 comes with native support for Chrome DevTools Protocol. This means QAs can now
  use Chrome development properties like Fetch, Network, Profiler, Performance, Application cache,
  and more. QAs can also leverage the APIs offered by Chrome DevTools to simulate poor network 
  conditions and perform geolocation testing. Using this API will also help developers or QAs to test 
  and resolve critical bugs for specific web-pages faster and on the fly.
  
6. Better Window/Tab Management in Selenium 4
  
  	There are several instances in test automation wherein one might need to open a particular
  link in a new tab or window to perform certain actions. To achieve this in Selenium 3, QAs had 
  to create a new driver object and then perform the switch operation using the WindowHandle method
  to perform subsequent steps. This is set to change in Selenium 4 as it comes with a
  new API – newWindow that allows users to create and switch to a new window/tab without creating
  a new WebDriver object. Sample 
  
  code snippet to open a new window
  
 	 driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
	// Opens a new window and switches to new window
	driver.switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.WINDOW);

	// Opens BrowserStack homepage in the newly opened window
	driver.navigate().to("https://www.browserstack.com/");
  
  Sample code snippet to open a new tab within the same window
  
  	driver.get("https://www.google.com/");
	// Opens a new tab in existing window
	driver.switchTo().newWindow(WindowType.TAB);

	// Opens Browserstack homepage in the newly opened tab
	driver.navigate().to("https://www.browserstack.com/");
  
  
7. Deprecation of Desired Capabilities
  
  Desired Capabilities were primarily used in the test scripts to define the test environment 
  (browser name, version, operating system) forexecution on the Selenium Grid.

	In Selenium 4, capabilities objects are replaced with Options. This means testers now need to create an Options
  object, set test requirements, and pass the object to the Driver constructor.

	Listed below are the Options objects to be used going forward for defining browser-specific capabilities:

		Firefox – FirefoxOptions
		Chrome – ChromeOptions
		Internet Explorer (IE) – InternetExplorerOptions
		Microsoft Edge – EdgeOptions
		Safari – SafariOptions
8. Modifications in the Actions Class
  
  Actions class in Selenium is primarily used to simulate input actions from mouse and keyboard on 
  specific web elements (For eg: Left click, Right click, Double click, etc)

	In Selenium 4, several new methods have been added to the Actions class:

	click(WebElement)
	This method is added to Actions class to replace the moveToElement(onElement).click(). 
  It is used to click on a certain web element.

	clickAndHold(WebElement)
	This method will replace the moveToElement(onElement).clickAndHold(). 
  It is used to click on an element without releasing the click.

	contextClick(WebElement)
	This method will replace moveToElement(onElement).contextClick(). 
  It will perform the right click operation.

	doubleClick(WebElement)
	This method is added to replace moveToElement(element).doubleClick(). 
  It will perform a double click on an element.

	release()
  
  Reference Link:- Click here