Top 4 Differences between Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver

Selenium Testing Training: As a Automation test engineer each and everyone must know about the basic differences between these two. Difference between Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver an important question which you need to be clear off. This part of the Free Selenium Tutorial will helps you to learn about it,

Read Selenium Web Driver Architecture before going further for detailed understanding,  The main differences between Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver lies in its architecture.

Browser Control: (Important Point)


Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver

RC – which stands for Remote Control is the predecessor of Selenium Web Driver, Why it is called as Remote Control? Because it doesn’t interact directly with the browse instead uses a HTTP Proxy to control the browser.  Selenium RC has a web server which is coded in Java, this server acts as the HTTP Proxy.

WebDriver- Without any need for remote control or the support of Selenium server it directly interacts with the browser. It uses the browser’s native support for automation.

Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver

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Speed: (which matters the most)


RC – It is a bit slow while comparing with Selenium Web Driver because as described above RC uses a Javascript program to control the browser which is called as Selenium Core.

WebDriver – It is surely faster than RC because it approaches the browser directly without any intermediate requirement. It uses the browser’s own engine to control it.

API: (Here is the Point) – Application Program Interface


RC – It is bit complicated, Developers faces issue more often in selecting which key to use : type or typeKeys. And also different browsers uses different ways which also varies.

WebDriver – The commands here are very simple and also not redundant.

Browser Support: (Headless Support)


Headless: HTMLUnit browser is termed as Headless because it is invisible and GUI less

RC- It does not support Headless HTMLUnit browserIt needs a visible browser for its operation.

WebDriver- On other hand WebDriver supports HTMLUnit browser which is GUI less and also it is very fast browser and no need wait for page elements to load.

These above mentioned are the Top 4 Differences between Selenium RC and Selenium WebDriver which every tester must know.

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