Compatibility between Selenium WebDriver and the major web browsers

Question

Is Selenium 2.53.1 compatible with Firefox 47? Which version of Safari I need to install MacOs to have it working with Selenium 2.53.x? I've asked myself such question many times and I can see a lot of such questions online.

1. Are there any acceptance tests verifying compatibility between specific Selenium version and specific Web browser version?
2. Is there a matrix available online showing results of such tests?

Answer 1

I work for an online Selenium Grid provider, where we automatically pick the correct configurations for all tests that our customers run. There's quite a few things you need to consider when running different versions of browsers/Selenium/Selenium driver versions:

IE

• Use IEDriver 2.42 for IE7 and IE6.
• Use the x64 IEDriver if you want to take screenshots (Screenshots truncated issue)
• Use the x32 IEDriver for your tests (Slow text-entry issue)

Chrome:

• Chrome 63-65 works with chromedriver 2.36
• Chrome 62-64 works with chromedriver 2.35
• Chrome 61-63 works with chromedriver 2.34
• Chrome 60-62 works with chromedriver 2.33
• Chrome > 57, use chromedriver 2.28
• Chrome > 54, use chromedriver 2.25
• Chrome = 53, use chromedriver 2.24
• Chrome > 49, use chromedriver 2.22
• Chrome > 43, use chromedriver 2.20
• Chrome > 41, use chromedriver 2.15
• older versions, use chromedriver 2.10

Firefox:

• Firefox 38 and lower, use Selenium 2.46.0
• Firefox < 47, use Selenium 2.53.1
• Firefox >= 47, use Selenium 3.0.1

Safari:

• Use Selenium 2.48.0 for Safari 7, 8, 9
• Use safaridriver by Apple for Safari 10

Answer 2

It is right there on the Selenium website (see below). Of course, the Firefox compatibility might have changed with the recent updates (you now have to use Marionette), so that could have some impact.

Firefox

Support for Firefox is the latest release, the previous release, the latest ESR release and the previous ESR release.

For example Selenium 2.40.0 (released on Feb 19, 2014) supports Firefox 27, 26, 24, 17

Selenium with Firefox can be run on any platform that Firefox supports for those versions, that also allow users to install a custom Firefox extension.

Internet Explorer

Versions 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are supported. Version 11 requires additional configuration.

The selenium project tests each release on Windows 7.

Safari

SafariDriver requires Safari 5.1+ (Note, due to Apple potentially dropping support > Safari 6.X for Windows, new developments in the bindings may not work in the Windows platform)

Opera OperaDriver is supported by Opera Software, refer to their documentation for supported versions.

Chrome ChromeDriver is supported by the Chromium project, please refer to their documentation for any compatibility information

EDIT:

WebDriver support is available for Internet Explorer (IE6 through IE11) via the open source IEDriverServer.exe provided by the Selenium Project. The Microsoft Edge browser provides its own implementation of WebDriver.

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/downloads - the latest release supports Chrome v53 to v55.

For Safari 10+, use Apple's SafariDriver (the one provided by Selenium is outdated).

Answer 3

FDM's answers explains that Selenium teams verify only their libraries with browsers versions released prior to library release. But if a new Firefox version is release after that, compatibility is not officially verified and published.

To comlicate things, there are actually three things that can become incompatible:

• Client library version, e.g., org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-chrome-driver:3.01
• Selenium Server version, e.g., ChromeDriver 2.25
• Web browser version, e.g., Chrome 55.

I was hoping Sauce Labs makes compatibility tests between all three pieces, but unfortunately they verify only the last two:

We don’t necessarily test client library versions agains selenium server/driver versions, but we do tests selenium server/driver versions against browser versions, and only the supported/valid server/driver versions will be used for the browser you select.