Selenium-RC: Using the experimental browser launchers

Selenium 0.9.0 comes with four "experimental" browser launchers. Two of these do not require the use of proxy servers at all; the other two use the proxy server aggressively to modify the application under test. These browser launchers allow you to test applications on any web site, including SSL/HTTPS websites, and allow your tests to freely change domains.

Elevated Security Privileges

The two experimental "elevated security privilege" browser launchers are:

You can use one of these browser launchers just by specifying them instead of *firefox or *iexplore in your call to getNewBrowserSession (or in your constructor to the Selenium object in your client driver of choice).

cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*chrome&2=http://www.google.com

If Firefox is installed in a non-standard location, you can launch *chrome mode like this:

cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*chrome c:\firefox\firefox.exe&2=http://www.google.com

These browser launchers are still experimental because they behave somewhat differently from a normal browser as a user might use it. (We have a lot of areas in the code where we have to check whether this is chrome or HTA and behave differently in that case.) We're optimistic that these browser launchers will one day become the default, but for now we're just making them available as experimental options, useful as workarounds when nothing else works.

Note that *chrome mode is not really compatible with *custom, because we must create our own Firefox profile in order to run Firefox in *chrome mode. If you need to use your own Firefox profile together with *chrome mode, you can use the -firefoxProfileTemplate command line option as you start the Selenium Server; this will make a copy of your profile before we begin modifying it. For example:

java -jar selenium-server.jar -firefoxProfileTemplate "C:\Documents and Settings\danielf\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ebbhbrpt.default"

Proxy Injection Mode

The two experimental "proxy injection mode" browser launchers are:

"Proxy injection" mode is a new highly experimental feature for 0.9.0. (Beware, there are bugs in proxy injection mode; see our bug tracker for details.) Whereas in "normal mode" we keep two automated test windows--one for Selenium, and one for your application under test (AUT)--in proxy injection mode we eliminate the separate Selenium window, in favor of "injecting" Selenium into every HTML page. By injecting ourselves into the HTML, we have increased control over the AUT, but this comes with some risk, because we're also modifying the AUT in order to test it.

To use PI mode, you need to start the Selenium Server with a special command line argument, like this:
java -jar selenium-server.jar -proxyInjectionMode
There are additional command line options you can use that only apply to proxy injection mode; see our command-line options page for details. Once you've given the special command line argument, you can use an expermental proxyinjection browser launcher like this:

cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*pifirefox&2=http://www.google.com

If Firefox is installed in a non-standard location, you can launch *pifirefox mode like this:

cmd=getNewBrowserSession&1=*pifirefox c:\firefox\firefox.exe&2=http://www.google.com