Today we’re announcing support for automated testing of Microsoft Edge through the W3C WebDriver standard. To use WebDriver with Microsoft Edge, you need the MicrosoftWebDriver server on a Windows Insiders build of 10166 or newer. Once that’s installed, you can try out WebDriver for yourself!
WebDriver is an emerging standard through which Web developers can write tests to automate Web browsers for site testing. It provides a programmable remote control for developing complex user scenarios and running them in an automated fashion against your website in a browser. WebDriver is used by top web properties like Bing, Azure, SharePoint, Facebook, Google, and others to automate testing their sites within a browser. With this new capability, Microsoft Edge can be run through the same regression testing as other browsers, helping developers identify issues with less effort and making sites just work for our end users.
As we described in “Building a more interoperable Web with Microsoft Edge,” the Web is built on the principle of multiple independent, interoperable implementations of web standards, and true interoperability means that all web content, browsers, and specifications should align to the same well-defined behavior. Keeping that principle in mind, our implementation supports both the W3C WebDriver specification and the JSON Wire Protocol. The Browser Testing and Tools working group has been doing a great job of standardizing automation testing interfaces as a part of the emerging WebDriver specification. For backwards compatibility with existing tests, we have implemented the JSON Wire Protocol, so existing tests should also just work. We’re not done yet, as the WebDriver specification is still in an early stage of standardization, and we still have more features to implement. You can find out more about all of the WebDriver interfaces we have implemented on our Platform Status page here.
Borland contributions to Microsoft Edge
Microsoft has a long history of collaborating with industry technology leaders to bring the best-in-class experiences. In order to truly build an interoperable implementation that our customers can use, we have partnered with the Borland Silk team from Micro Focus, an industry leader in automation testing tools, to help contribute code to the WebDriver implementation in Microsoft Edge. The Borland team is also bringing their expertise in automation testing to help inform the next level of changes we should pursue in the W3C standard. Our thanks to the Borland team for all of their help in making the Web better!
How WebDriver works
To get started using WebDriver, you will need to download a testing framework of your choice along with an appropriate language binding and the MicrosoftWebDriver server. We have submitted updates to the C# and Java Selenium language bindings and are hoping to add support to other languages in the future.
WebDriver is disabled by default for security. In order to enable using WebDriver, you will need to download and install the MicrosoftWebDriver in a location with your test repository. You should be able to use Microsoft Edge’s WebDriver implementation just like you would use any other browser’s implementation.
Here’s an example of C# code opening a new browser Window, navigating to http://www.bing.com and searching webdriver.
We’re excited to deliver WebDriver in Microsoft Edge and look forward to hearing what you think! Take it for a spin and share your feedback in the comments below or @MSEdgeDev on Twitter.
– Clay Martin, Program Manager, Microsoft Edge
– John Jansen, Principle Software Engineer, Microsoft Edge
– Jatinder Mann, Senior Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Edge
– Mark Conway, Director, Micro Focus