The document summarizes the new features of Selenium WebDriver 4, which was officially released in October 2021. Some key points: - Selenium 4 focuses on standardizing with the W3C webdriver specification. It allows WebDriver to communicate directly with browsers without encoding/decoding of the JSON wire protocol. - DesiredCapabilities have been replaced by Options classes to configure browser settings. The JSON wire protocol is deprecated. - New features include relative locators, page printing tests, improved window handling, authentication support, and shadow DOM automation. - The architecture has been optimized for observability, scalability using Docker/Kubernetes, and integration with tools like Chrome DevTools. - While major changes are under the

1. Selenium WebDriver 4
What’s New???
Vikas Thange
Test Architect Nov 16, 2021

2. 3.x
v3.0 - Oct 2016
v3.141.59 - Nov 2018
4.x
Alpha - April 2019
Beta - Feb 2021
Release Candidate - Sep 2021
Stable - Oct 2021
4000+ Commits

3. 3.x
The JSON Wire Protocol
– Facilitated communication between test code
and the browser in question
– Involved the unnecessary extra task of
encoding and decoding API requests via the
W3C protocol
– Only drivers used W3C webdriver protocol
– WebDriver utilizes the W3C standardization.
– Now WebDriver communicate directly with the
driver without JSON wire protocol encoding
decoding
– This will likely result in more stable cross
browser tests via Selenium than in its previous
architectures.
– The JSON Wire Protocol will be deprecated in
Selenium 4
– Opera & PhantomJS native support removed
4.x

4. Architectural difference
Selenium 3 Selenium 4
source:https://blog.testproject.io/2021/10/15/selenium-4-is-officially-released/

5. 4.x
➢ Selenium WebDriver W3C Standardization
➢ Enhanced Selenium 4 IDE
➢ RemoteWebDriver Builder
➢ DesiredCapabilities
➢ Relative Locators
➢ Page Printing Test
➢ New Window handling API
➢ Basic & Digest Authentication
➢ Support for Chrome DevTools
➢ DOM Mutation
➢ Read Console Message
➢ Capture JS Errors
➢ Network Interceptions
➢ Optimized Selenium Grid
○ Re-Architectured for future
○ Observability
○ Improved Scalability (Docker & k8s support)
○ + More
➢ The shadow DOM automation
New Features / Changes

6. Selenium WebDriver W3C Standardization
https://www.w3.org/TR/webdriver/

7. JSON Wire Protocol
Mar 10, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/channel/vikasthange https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/JsonWireProtocol

8. Selenium WebDriver W3C Standardization

9. Selenium WebDriver W3C Standardization

10. RemoteWebDriver Instance
Selenium 3

11. RemoteWebDriver Builder
Selenium 4 - Local

12. RemoteWebDriver Builder
Selenium 4 - Remote machine

13. DesiredCapabilities
In Selenium 4, DesiredCapabilities have been replaced by Options. To use the Driver class, QAs
have to create an Options class object, set test requirements, and pass the object to the Driver
constructor.
Driver constructors that accepted Capabilities objects have been replaced with those that accept
Options.
# ChromeDriver(Capabilities) replaced by ChromeDriver(ChromeOptions).
# SafariDriver(Capabilities) replaced by SafariDriver(SafariOptions).
# EgdeDriver(Capabilities) replaced by EdgeDriver(EdgeOptions).
# FirefoxDriver(Capabilities) replaced by FirefoxDriver(FirefoxOptions).
# InternetExplorerDriver(Capabilities) replaced by InternetExplorerDriver(InternetExplorerOptions).

14. DesiredCapabilities

15. Relative Locator

16. Relative Locator

17. Relative Locator

18. Relative Locator
- All in for Relative Locators?? Nah!!
- Not recommended as a replacement of primary locators
- Be careful while using Relative Locators if you expect elements positions to
change
- Dynamic element locators and no unique locator could be good usecase for
Relative Locators

19. Page Printing Test

20. New Window Handling API

21. Basic & Digest Authentication - Event Driven

22. Chrome Debugging Protocol (CDP) support
- Automate Chromium based browsers
- Access Advanced features from browser
- Interfact HasDevTools
- Not recommended as It’s ties tests to specific browser / Version.

23. Chrome Debugging Protocol (CDP) support

24. Read Console Messages

25. Capture JavaScript Errors

26. Network Interceptions

27. Selenium Grid
Observability
Event driver
Docker &
K8s support
Appium Support

28. The shadow DOM

29. No Major changes - Backward compatibility
Actions API
WebDriver Wait / Fluent wait
8 Primary locators
WebElements methods
WebDriver methods

30. Summary
- Selenium 3 has already matured with all required features needed for
automation.
- Upgrade 4 is majorly w3c standardization. However it is a big upgrade
architecturally , at end user we might not see the difference in code. The
capabilities / API calls will be automatically handled by client libs.
- New features added are more advanced features. Just like addons and may
not be needed really needed by every team
- Use of Relative locators and CDP tools are not recommended by selenium
Devs.
- Support for shadow dom automation may open door to automating complex
apps

31. References
https://applitools.com/event/using-selenium-4/
https://www.browserstack.com/webinars/selenium-4-whats-new-and-how-you-can-
use-it
https://blog.testproject.io/2021/10/15/selenium-4-is-officially-released/
https://medium.com/@vikasthange/browserstack-browsermob-proxy-for-network-
call-intercepting-11c4bf77a376
https://www.lambdatest.com/learning-hub/selenium-4
Source code https://gitlab.com/vikasthange/selenium-4-latest-features-demo-code/-
/tree/main/src/test/java

32. Q&A
Thank You