Why Agilitest need Web drivers
Agilitest is a software solution installed on your computer and regularly updated at launch.
The objective is to make available as quickly as possible new features for our customers, to correct bugs present in the solution, but also to adapt to the evolutions of the browsers that we support.
In the facts, without additional configuration, Agilitest currently supports 5 browsers: Chrome, Firefox, NewEdge, Opera and Internet Explorer in version 11.
Our philosophy is to provide support as soon as possible to the latest versions of browsers, and this is why we use the web drivers to communicate to the browsers : we can provide a very quick support as soon as the Selenium drivers that we rely on are updated on these latest versions.
Therefore, the update of Agilitest will bring with it the latest version of the driver and will drive the latest version of the browser, and generally you have nothing to do because:
- If you update your browser, it should be done without impacting the operation.
- If you do not update it, well, it is often possible that the latest driver provides backward compatibility with previous versions of browsers, and in most cases, it goes well.
The Chrome update 74
Except that it did not go as planned for Chrome 74: The update of end of April 2019 and chromedriver Selenium brought a break of compatibility with Chrome 73. And since that date, it somehow happens with new versions.
To enable our customers to update their version of from one version of Chrome to another, we have made it possible to deploy alternative configurations do not announce the official support.
For example, currently, Agilitest can drive Chromium and an extension of it, JXBrowser, an embeddable browser in a java heavy client.
How to proceed
Adding new browser versions to Agilitest requires the configuration of the editor in the .atsProperties file.
To set up a new browser, insert the following lines into your .atsProperties file:
<browser>
<name>chromium</name>
<driver>chromiumdriver</driver>
<path>D:\tools\chromium\chrome.exe</path>
</browser>
The name tag allows you to name the browser as it will be printed in Agilitest. A certain number of names are reserved because we adapt to the specifics of each browser: chrome, firefox, etc. You will therefore only be able to modify the driver and the path of the executable for a browser already known to Agilitest.
The driver tag tells Agilitest what is the name of the .exe driver to load (in the $ user /.actiontestscript/drivers/directory)
Here are the links of the drivers for Chrome, Firefox, IE , and Edge
The path tag indicates the path of the browser executable.
For example, if you want to use Firefox 60 ESR, the procedure is as follows:
- Download and install Firefox 60 ESR in a different directory than your firefox installation
- Complete the following lines in your .atsProperties file:
<browser>
<name>firefox</name>
<path>D:\tools\firefox60ESR\firefox.exe</path>
</browser>
In the case of firefox, the driver used should be compatible with the latest version and the ESR version, so there is no need to add a driver change.
To specify what is the MSEdge path, you may use the following lines:
<browser>
<name>msedge</name>
<path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe</path>
</browser>
