I am trying to do some browser performance testing using Webdriver.
With the Firefox driver there is a mechanism for updated the profile
and adding extensions. There isn't seem to be an analogous mechanism
with the Internet Explorer driver.

Is there any way to enable add-ons in Internet Explorer?

Are there any plans to add a profile mechanism for IE similar to the
one that exists for Firefox?

There are no plans to add this sort of capability to the IE driver.
The reason for this is that is partly because we just use the same IE
instance as the user would use on their machine (thus it's very easy
to set up the driver), and partly because no-one's done any research
into it.

The analogous method you're looking for would involve a one-time setup
on the machine running the tests to manually install the relevant
add-ons.

Simon

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Thanks for the information Simon.

I'm specifically talking about Dynatrace (http://ajax.dynatrace.com/
pages/learn/testimonials.aspx). I have installed it on the machine I'm
using but when I start IE from Webdriver then the Dynatrace add-in no
longer appears.

Have you seen this behaviour with IE add-ons before?

On Sep 10, 7:48 pm, Simon Stewart <simon.m.stew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are no plans to add this sort of capability to the IE driver.
> The reason for this is that is partly because we just use the same IE
> instance as the user would use on their machine (thus it's very easy
> to set up the driver), and partly because no-one's done any research
> into it.
>
> The analogous method you're looking for would involve a one-time setup
> on the machine running the tests to manually install the relevant
> add-ons.
>
> Simon
>

I've done some further testing on this issue and this appears to be a
Windows 7-specific "feature". When I run the test from Windows XP with
the HTTPWatch or DynaTrace add-on enabled it works.

On Windows 7, if you launch IE from the desktop, do the HTTPWatch and
DynaTrace add-ins work properly?  If so, they work when IE is launched
by the user, but not when IE is launched by Webdriver, then it sounds
like a bug in Webdriver.  If you verify this and write up a bug report
then it is likely to get fixed.

Hi Simon,

The IE driver makes no attempt to modify the plugins you've installed into IE. Often when people see IE being launched with a different set of plugins, it's because they installed a 32-bit plugin and are using the 64-bit IEDriverServer.exe. A 64-bit process like the 64-bit iexplore.exe cannot load a 32-bit .dll, and your IE plugin is in a .dll. Most IE plugins are still 32-bit, since that's still the default version of IE, even on 64-bit Windows. Make sure you're using the same "bit-ness" IEDriverServer.exe as the version of IE into which your plugin is installed.