browser strings

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SiKing

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Apr 13, 2010, 1:21:38 PM4/13/10
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Hi all.
I have been working with Selenium for over a year, and just today I
discovered that there are some browser strings that I was not aware
of. A lot of them seem obvious, but what is the difference between
*mock and *custom? And what are *pifirefox and *piiexplore?
I tried searching the SeDocs, but can't seem to be able to find
anything there. :(
TIA.

Moises Siles

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Apr 13, 2010, 1:42:45 PM4/13/10
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agree with you, this information is important, I want to know the difference between each one

Supported browsers include:
  *firefox
  *mock
  *firefoxproxy
  *pifirefox
  *chrome
  *iexploreproxy
  *iexplore
  *firefox3
  *safariproxy
  *googlechrome
  *konqueror
  *firefox2
  *safari
  *piiexplore
  *firefoxchrome
  *opera
  *iehta
  *custom



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darrell

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Apr 13, 2010, 6:13:31 PM4/13/10
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There is usually no or little traditional documentation for agile
projects, which Selenium is. If you work with an agile team they will
often tell you to load the source code and unit tests. The
requirements of the software are exercised by the unit tests. There
should be unit tests for each and every requirement. By looking at the
unit tests the requirements should be obvious. For anything not a
requirement but a necessary side effect of the implementation you need
to look at the source code.

If you look at the source code for the Selenium Server, in the
org.openqa.selenium.server.browserlaunchers package are the browser
classes for all the different supported browsers. You can look at
these to see all the difference. If you look at the class
BrowserLauncherFactory you can see a list of all the currently
supported browser strings.

That said, some of the browser strings should be obvious and others
totally confusing. I'll put what I have found below each string:

On Apr 13, 1:42 pm, Moises Siles <moises.si...@gmail.com> wrote:
> agree with you, this information is important, I want to know the difference
> between each one
>
> Supported browsers include:
>   *firefox

This is the generic Firefox browser. It will work with Firefox 2 or 3.
So if you want to run the test suite and some of the machines will
have Firefox 2 while others will have Firefox 3, this string will work
on both.

>   *mock

I haven't looked at the code for this but a Mock is a fake. So a mock
browser would be a fake browser. I would guess that the mock browser
is not a real browser and therefore not of as much interest to a
tester. Would be faster to use a mock browser than a real browser. So
if I wanted a quick unit test (used when a developer is doing TDD) I
might use a mock. Bottom line, if you don't know what a mock is, you
probably don't need to know.

>   *firefoxproxy

If you are using a proxy to get outside of a firewall with Firefox,
this is the string to use. I.e. if you had to configure your Firefox
preferences to include proxy information.

>   *pifirefox

Selenium has a proxy injection mode. Use this browser string if you
are using the proxy injection mode.

>   *chrome

This one is a little confusing. The 'chrome' of a web browser is the
usable space for the web page. That is, if the display is 1024x768,
the chrome will be smaller. The title, menu, toolbars, status bar,
etc. will reduce the usable space, i.e. the chrome. Google Chrome was
called Chrome because one of the main goals was to maximize the
chrome. Selenium was using the keyword *chrome before Google Chrome
and it was using it for Firefox.

>   *iexploreproxy

Internet Explorer configured with a proxy.

>   *iexplore

Basic Internet Explorer.

>   *firefox3

Firefox 3.x. Should not be used with Firefox 2 browsers.

>   *safariproxy

Apple Safari browser configured with a proxy.

>   *googlechrome

This is Google Chrome and not to be confused with *chrome which is
actually Firefox.

>   *konqueror

Konqueror is a web browser popular on Linux OS.

>   *firefox2

Firefox 2.x. Should not be used with Firefox 3 browsers.

>   *safari

Apple Safari web browser.

>   *piiexplore

Proxy injection mode with Internet Explorer.

>   *firefoxchrome

I'm guessing here but I suspect they are going to deprecate the
*chrome browser string and want people using this instead. It most
likely does the same as the *chrome browser string but makes it
obvious that this is for Firefox and not for Google Chrome.

>   *opera

Opera is a lesser know web browser but available on a number of
platforms.

>   *iehta

HTA is HTML Application. It was first introduced in Internet Explorer
5. It is a Microsoft specific feature. I hardly see them but
occasionally you will see *.hta files rather than *.html or *.htm
files. The name of the file doesn't have a web page an HTA. A tag in
the <HEAD> tag, i.e. <hta:application>. You can read more about HTA at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496(VS.85).aspx.

This browser string is for Internet Explorer using HTA files.

>   *custom

As new browser come out, you might find you want to use them but the
team has not added support for them or you are using a web browser the
team has no intention of supporting. You can use the *custom string to
run them. For example, if I am developing my own web browser called
FooFooZoo and the executable is located in C:\sandbox\trunk\FooFooZoo
\build\debug\ffz.exe, I can use the string "*custom C:\\sandbox\\trunk\
\FooFooZoo\\build\\debug\\ffz.exe" to use my FooFooZoo web browser.


> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 11:21 AM, SiKing <mark.le...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all.
> > I have been working with Selenium for over a year, and just today I
> > discovered that there are some browser strings that I was not aware
> > of. A lot of them seem obvious, but what is the difference between
> > *mock and *custom? And what are *pifirefox and *piiexplore?
> > I tried searching the SeDocs, but can't seem to be able to find
> > anything there. :(
> > TIA.
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Selenium Users" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to seleniu...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > selenium-user...@googlegroups.com<selenium-users%2Bunsubscribe@go oglegroups.com>

SiKing

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Apr 14, 2010, 2:19:37 PM4/14/10
to Selenium Users
First, thank you for your answer.

Unfortunately, from experimentation I know you are wrong about the
*iexplore and *iexploreproxy. *iexplore is the same thing as *iehta.
*iexploreproxy is the basic IE. I remember seeing an announcement
about this on the old SeBlog, but I do not know what has happened to
that.

Also, I do not understand the whole proxy injection mode. Reading the
selenium server help, you get:
-proxyInjectionMode: puts you into proxy injection mode, a mode where
the Selenium server acts as a proxy server for all content going to
the application under test. Under this mode, multiple domains can be
visited...
but:
-avoidProxy: By default, Selenium proxies every browser request. Set
this flag to make the browser use Selenium proxy only for URLs
containing '/selenium-server'
From the above, I would expect that *iexplore should be the same as
*piiexplore.

Or am I just way off on everything?

> the <HEAD> tag, i.e. <hta:application>. You can read more about HTA athttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496(VS.85).aspx.

Rajat Jindal

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Apr 14, 2010, 10:03:48 PM4/14/10
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Hi Mark,

As per my understanding Darrel is correct about iexplore and
iexploreproxy. If you try to open browser through selenium RC using
either of these and follow the logs, you can easily see iexplore is
the basic IE and iexploreproxy is the IE with some proxy injection.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks,
Rajat Jindal
http://quicksilver1183-tech.blogspot.com

Moises Siles

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Apr 15, 2010, 10:18:36 AM4/15/10
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thanks for this information!!!!



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Tony Chamberlain

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Sep 14, 2012, 1:25:44 PM9/14/12
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Is there any browser that doesn't actually render the HTML?  Selenium reads the .html files anyway, right, and doesn't care whether
the html is actually rendered on the screen?  I think I could speed things up by using such a browser since all I really need to do is
click on links and enter text into boxes and it doesn't really matter if the HTML is rendered or not (though I agree it is easier to see if
it is actually working if you render it).

Peter Gale

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Sep 14, 2012, 1:38:16 PM9/14/12
to Selenium Users
Strange ... that' s three times that that question has been asked in so many days, including once in the last hour.

If you search the forum you'll find the previous responses.


Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 10:25:44 -0700
From: chamberla...@gmail.com
To: seleniu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [selenium-users] Re: browser strings
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Peter Gale

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Sep 14, 2012, 1:42:54 PM9/14/12
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Though I guess your query relates to the Selenium IDE?


From: peterjef...@hotmail.co.uk
To: seleniu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [selenium-users] Re: browser strings
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 18:38:16 +0100
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