Spotlight on Rapise 7.3: New Selenium Based Recording for Chrome and Edge Browsers

June 23rd, 2022 by inflectra

In December of 2020, the Google Chrome browser team made a major announcement - the release of Google Chrome Manifest 3. This new version of Chrome is designed to radically improve the security and safety of web browsing. Specifically:

With the introduction of Manifest V3, we will disallow remotely hosted code. This mechanism is used as an attack vector by bad actors to circumvent Google’s malware detection tools and poses a significant risk to user privacy and security.

However this new manifest version has an unfortunate side effect for the software testing industry, it will prevent the Chrome extensions used by many popular test automation tools such as Rapise, Ranorex, TestComplete, UFT and others from working. Luckily in the case, of Rapise, we have new web browser recording solution ready for you to use in Rapise 7.3. This will be released six months before Google formally switches over to Manifest V3.

Overview

Rapise 7.3 includes our new Selenium WebDriver based Recorder and a major upgrade of the Selenium WebDriver downloading and configuration mechanism within Rapise. The recorder has all the features of the old Rapise plugin-based Web recorder and also offers new features for doing multi-tab and multi-window recording. Best of all it no longer requires installing a plugin for either the Chrome or Edge browsers.

New WebDriver Downloading Mechanism

In Rapise 7.2 we introduced the automatic downloading of WebDriver executables (chromedriver.exe, geckodriver.exe, etc.). However it required a few configuration steps to set up. Now in Rapise 7.3, driver downloading is completely seamless and performed automatically by Rapise when needed. Rapise automatically detects the correct version of required driver executable both for standalone browsers and embedded ones (e.g. Chrome in Microsoft Teams, Skype, Microsoft Unified Service Desk etc.). Every downloaded driver executable is saved with the version information in its name. Rapise automatically switches executables based on the executed test.

Here is the example of SeleniumDrivers folder on a machine with Rapise:

Basic Features of the New Recorder

In addition to supporting Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge without needing the installation of a plugin, the new Selenium recording has the following primary features:

  1. Works with standalone Chrome and Edge
  2. Works with embedded Chrome
    (Electron, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Microsoft Unified Service Desk, etc.)
  3. No browser plugins required, auto download/switch of browser compatible
    1. chromedriver.exe,
    2. msedgedriver.exe
  4. Full recording support: Record, Learn and Verify
  5. Self-healing locators and WebAppProfile supported
  6. WebSpy with tracking/highlighting support

Advanced Features of the New Recorder

In addition, these new features are good reasons to try out the new recorder and switch from the old one, regardless of the Chrome Manifest V3 update:

1) Play tests while doing other things on a machine.

The new recorder just like the player of Selenium tests works with separate browser profiles that do not interfere with thebrowser profiles you use for daily work.

2) Initial URL prompt.

If the recorder launches a new browser instance, it prompts the user for the starting URL. The list of recent URLs is preserved.

3) Multi-tab, multi-window recording.

The new recorder generates: Open, ActivateWindow, CreateTab  and Close steps automatically, to handle different tabs and windows:

4) Browser auto reconnect.

The new web recorder lets you record a few steps, stop recording  and then start another recording session - Rapise will reconnect to the running browser. This new auto reconnect functionality also enables such frequently used RVL features as Play Selection, Play From Here and Play This Sheet.

Future Plans

Once Rapise 7.3 is released, we have the following future plans for Rapise:

  • Add support for Selenium based recording with Firefox to avoid need for the Firefox plugin.
  • Add recording support for Apple Safari and mobile browsers - currently Rapise supports playback only

spotlight roadmap rapise recording web testing selenium chrome

Spira Helps You Deliver Quality Software, Faster and with Lower Risk.

Get Started with Spira for Free

And if you have any questions, please email or call us at +1 (202) 558-6885

Free Trial