28: Jim Evans : Secrets on How to Succeed with Selenium and IE

Jim Evans: Secrets on How to Succeed with Selenium and IE

Are you an automation engineer using Selenium and have a requirement that forces you to have to test against IE browsers? If so, I’m guessing you’re probably frustrated with various flaky issues that don’t occur in any other browser except Internet Explorer.

If you want to learn the secrets of how to succeed with Selenium IE automation, you’ve come to the right place. Today we’ll be test talking with Jim Evans.

Jim is one of the key contributors to the Selenium project. He is also the man behind the Selenium .NET bindings, and the Internet Explorer driver.

About Jim Evans

Jim Evans has had a career in the software industry concentrating in software testing that spans more than two decades. His experience includes 12 years at Microsoft and 7 years as a Senior QA Engineer at Numara Software (now part of BMC Software), and he has been at Salesforce.com since early 2012. He started working with the WebDriver and Selenium since the end of 2009, beginning with the .NET bindings, and rewriting the Internet Explorer driver in late 2010. When he’s not hacking code, he enjoys spending time with his family, sampling small-batch bourbon, and performing as a singer and songwriter.

Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk

• Some issues with IE 64bit javascript engine
• Biggest issue with running against IE tend to by synchronization issues
• Is CSS or XPATH slower against IE?
• IE does not have a native XPath engine
• Microsoft is in the process of developing a native XPath DOM engine
• Selenium WebDriver specification becoming a W3C standard and the browsers vendors will be responsible for maintaining in the future
• Microsoft already working on provided a vendor based WebDriver implementation for Internet Explorer
• Webdriver 3.0 release info
• Learn how to contribute to the Selenium project
• Learn what the IE configurations settings should be before you run your tests
• How to better maintain out Selenium Test Suites
• Why the Watir API is cool
• And much much more!

Resources

• Dave Haeffner : The Selenium Guidebook
• Selenium Design Patterns and Best Practices – Dima Kovalenko
• Selenium Developers List
• Selenium IRC channel #Selenium free node IRC network
• Selenium on GitHub
• Selenium WebDriver — Fix for 3 common IE errors
• Watir – Web application testing with Ruby

Connect with Jim

• Twitter: @jimevansmusic
• Blog: http://jimevansmusic.blogspot.com/

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