"Nate Kirby" wrote on 10/21/2005 02:55:45 PM: > I also could not get these directions to work at all in Firefox. I thought > selenium was browser agnostic.
Regarding Firefox, let me make a quick note: I don't think anyone else has noticed this or mentioned this... But the Firefox-only Selenium Recorder lets you test foreign sites (like Google) with ease... Since it is a "chrome" application... It is not subject to the same security policies that plain old Selenium is subject to... If you want to use Firefox to test Google using the HTML table style of selenium, I would investigate the Selenium Recorder further... Okay, for a longer answer.... Selenium is browser agnostic... at its core it's just HTML and JavaScript and a few stylesheets. However, hacking around security protections to test a remote site is mostly not browser agnostic... Not too many apps try to do what Selenium is trying to do... In fact, Selenium is trying to do what most security experts would consider a security bug.... Selenium is *merely* JavaScript. It is JavaScript running in one frame, that drives a website in a child iframe. All is fine if Selenium is installed on the same site and server as the one you are testing... But if you try to test some foreign site, like Google... this is called "cross site scripting"... and has been locked down and labeled a security hole by everyone in the universe. Unfortunately, turning off this security for the benevolent purposes of testing with Selenium is not easy or as straight forward as you'd hope. However, one of the easiest ways to get around the security sandbox that Selenium sits in, and to thus be able to test foreign sites, is use an "HTA" application. By definition... this is Windows/Internet Explorer only. Microsoft "turns off" lots of JavaScript security protections that you'd normally see in a web page if you merely rename your ".html" to ".hta".... So it's a trade-off... Sadly, Microsoft has mostly disowned its HTA work... Perhaps, HTML+JavaScript+No Security as a replacement for writing desktop apps was hurting sales of Visual Studio. ;-) There are a few other alternatives, though...if you want to test foreign sites in a truly browser agnostic way with Selenium... you could install the Selenium Standalone Server on your computer... The Standalone Server does its security workaround magic by using James Marshall's excellent reverse proxy script to make local selenium and the foreign site all look like they're coming from localhost... thus getting around JavaScript security. A hack, yes... and it works in most cases, but it is dark magic in how it works.... The standalone server also throws in a few extra goodies in allowing you to write your test scripts in any language you prefer via a built-in XML-RPC gateway. The down side to using the Standalone Server is that I haven't had/made the time to keep it up-to-date lately. Though I hope that changes in the near future. I think there are three futures for Selenium. (2 of which can be used for testing remote sites)... 1) "Plain old Selenium" --- you embed it in your site with all your other html and JavaScript files... Tests are written as HTML tables (or maybe straight JavaScript in the future)... However, you can't test a remote site in this configuration because of security restraints enforced by all browsers. 2) Standalone Server Selenium -- uses some reverse proxy trickery to work around cross site scripting security... It works for testing a remote site, but uses dark, magic. And magic is bad. 3) Expand the use of browser plug-ins like Selenium Recorder... Plug-ins are probably the least "hacky".and "magical".. since the browser implicitly trusts a plug-in and allows it do anything... However, this is *more work*... We would need to write a browser plug-in for each major browser and keep them up-to-date with each new browser release. Google's Toolbar, the GreaseMonkey plug-in would be used as inspiration. Actually, I imagine some kind of mash-up of Greasemonkey and Selenium Recorder would be the result. By the way, Selenium Recorder rocks and I'd like to see its development continue. I'll leave the HTA Selenium thing out of the future since its not cross browser and not cross platform and there are no guarantees from Microsoft that they'll keep supporting it. - Jason _______________________________________________ Selenium-users mailing list Selenium-users@lists.public.thoughtworks.org http://lists.public.thoughtworks.org/mailman/listinfo/selenium-users
