What is the difference between native WebDriver.click() and JS .click()?

[Max Boring]

In my really weird case I have a dropdown I want to expand. It is visible, not overlapped, I have all sorts of Implicit waits, page load timeouts and so on, of course everything works fine in FF and Chrome.

If I send element to smth like

driver.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", element);

, then the dropdown expands, but if I try:

element.click();

or

new Actions(driver).click(element).build().perform();

or

element.sendKeys(Keys.ENTER);

then the element is just slightly blinks without expanding.

Any idea, my dear friends?

I'd like to know in detail, but to me having no experience in C++ for analyzing IEDriverServer.exe on my own =)

[shre...@gmail.com]

If you are trying to operate on a drop-down box, you should be using a 'Select' class object. See if below url helps you with the detail:
https://www.guru99.com/select-option-dropdown-selenium-webdriver.html

~ Sreekanth

[Max Boring]

This is not related to the question - first, I don't have native controllers and there's no <select> in my DOM tree, second, I don't really care how to handle what, I only want to knw the difference between JS click and click that Selenium provides out of the box.

[Joshua Burns]

To my understanding webdriver .Click() method simulates native events while using a JS.click is akin to a synthetic event https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/wiki/Advanced-User-Interactions#native-events-versus-synthetic-events

[Max Boring]

Joshua, thank you for sharing the link!

According to the table, IE supports native events, not synthetic, while in my case it's the opposite way - JS works, neither WebDriver does! =(