Document In Windows Internet Explorer: Fill & Download for Free

Do you remember Windows XP? Of course you do, everyone remembers this "old good XP" which was more stable than Windows 98 and lighter than Windows Vista.Then why replace a good working Windows which is becoming more and more stable as time goes on (and patches too...) by a fancy Windows 7 or 8 whose UI is weird and some may say unpractical for PC users?To this question a lot of people answered "I keep my XP"(~7% - April 2017 netmarketshare.com)And this is a serious problem for Microsoft!Why?Theoretically, the support for Windows XP was supposed to end on the 14th of April 2009 but, since too many PCs were running Windows XP at that time, Microsoft gently extended it until the 8th april 2014. (Windows lifecycle fact sheet - Windows Help).But maintaining the support costs a lot of money:developers to write patches and the documentationpeople for the technical supportbackward compatibility code on any new applications or versions of WindowsNote that some old applications survived with Windows XP (especially our friend Internet Explorer 6) that Microsoft also had to support.All this for users who won't pay for these services (since they have already paid their Windows XP licences).Yes, but ultimately people will buy new computers with Windows 7, 8, and 10.Indeed, but this scenario may repeat and Microsoft surely doesn't want to support an outdated operating system for more than 12 years again (Windows XP was released for retail sale in October 2001).Then what is the solution?No more versions of Windows: only one Windows 10, which is regularly updated. Hence, with a computer purchase, you buy a lifetime licence for Windows.Microsoft does not get any more money from people updating their operating system but only when they replace their computer (which is approximately every 4-5 years. Guess what? It was the average lifetime of a Windows version).By ensuring everyone uses the same version of Windows, Microsoft saves a lot of money in technical support and maintenance.This solution is not new (this is what Apple has been doing for a long time now) and Microsoft seems to consider it is the best.Hence Microsoft offers Windows 10 freely to users who still use Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Why? Because these versions may be the next "Windows XP" (a version which lasts way longer than expected).This seems to be a long term strategy to set up a unified Windows ecosystem on most platforms and devices.EditCurrently 25% of the Desktops PC use Windows 10 so it seems that it worked partially out. Still almost of 50% are still using Windows 7 and may not change in the next years.

With the basic setup ready for Selenium automation testing, the next step is to download IE WebDriver i.e. IEDriverServer executable on your development machine. The download locations are below:MACHINE ARCHITECTURE - DOWNLOAD LOCATION32-bit Windows (or 32-bit IE) - https://goo.gl/9Cqa4q64-bit Windows (or 64-bit IE) - https://goo.gl/AtHQuvIf you face any issues with 64-bit IE during the course of development & testing, replace WebDriver 64-bit IE with WebDriver for 32-bit IE as discussed in the earlier section. Add the path (where IEDriverServer.exe is present) to the environment variable PATH using set PATH=%PATH%;Let us have a look at a simple example that demonstrates Selenium automation testing with IE where the task is to perform a search on Duckduckgo.FileName – test_1_duckduckgo_search.pyimport unittest from selenium import webdriver import time from time import sleep  from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By  class SeachTest(unittest.TestCase):  def setUp(self):  # Creation of IE WebDriver instance  self.driver = webdriver.Ie(executable_path=r'location_of_IEDriverServer.exe')   def test_Search(self):  driver = self.driver  driver.maximize_window()  driver.get("https://duckduckgo.com/")  elem = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.NAME, "q")))  elem.send_keys("Lambdatest")  elem.submit()   sleep(10)   def tearDown(self):  # Close the browser.  self.driver.close()  if __name__ == '__main__':  unittest.main() The example makes use of the unittest framework in Python. If you are not aware of unittest, I recommend you to read this blog on parallel testing with Selenium & Python using unittest.The prerequisite steps for initialization & setup are done in the setup() method and clean-up steps are done in the tearDown() method. A local WebDriver is used to invoke an instance of IE.def setUp(self):  # Creation of IE WebDriver instance  self.driver = webdriver.Ie(executable_path=r'location_of_IEDriverServer.exe') A WebDriverWait() of 20 seconds is used to ensure that the loading of the search box on Duckduckgo is complete. The execution was done by invoking python <file_name.py> from the terminal. Shown below are some of the options that you can set while configuring the IE browser for Selenium Automation Testing.Since this was the very first cross browser testing with Selenium & IE, there were a couple of issues that we encountered during the process:NoSuchWindowException – The exception was raised due to incorrect Protected Mode Settings in IE. As per the official documentation of InternetExplorer Driver, the Protected Mode settings for each zone should be the same i.e. High/Medium/Medium-High.To change the settings, please go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Security option on the IE browser. Set the same Protected Mode Settings for each zone i.e. Internet, Local Intranet, Trusted Sites, and Restricted Sites.Also, disable Enhanced Protected Mode for each zone. Restart IE to apply the settings and now you would not encounter this issue.Lag in event handling – The connection between the WebDriver i.e. IEDriverServer.exe and browser under test i.e. IE might get lost during the process of testing. This can happen when you are waiting for a dynamic web element to be loaded on the page. You need to perform two important setup changes mentioned belowCreation of iexplore.exe key in registry (only for IE 11) – In case you are using IE 11, you should create a new entry in the registry.ARCHITECTUREREGISTRY KEY LOCATION32-bit Windows (or 32-bit IE)HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BFCACHE64-bit Windows (or 64-bit IE)HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BFCACHESubkey FEATURE_BFCACHE may or may not be present. If it is not present, you should first create the subkey; create a new entry of DWORD type named iexplore.exe, and assign value 0 to it.Browser Zoom Level – In case you have changed the browser zoom level, please set it to 100% so that native mouse events can be set to the correct coordinates.32-bit IEDriverServer.exe on the 64-bit machine – We had earlier mentioned about the performance issues with 64-bit IE WebDriver and we could witness the lag when they search for LambdaTest was performed on Duckduckgo. We replaced the 64-bit IEDriverServer.exe with 32-bit IEDriverServer.exe and the performance was perfectly fine!We look at another example where interaction with the web locators is done to perform relevant actions. You can make use of the Inspect Element on IE or any other browser installed on your machine to get details about the web locators i.e. XPath, CSS Selector, Name, Link Text, ID, etc. We have made use of NAME and XPath locators to perform actions on those web elements.from selenium import webdriver from time import sleep from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait  # Internet Explorer driver = webdriver.Ie(executable_path=r'location_of_IEDriverServer.exe') driver.maximize_window() driver.get("https://www.lambdatest.com")  try:  myElem_1 = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CLASS_NAME, 'home-btn')))  print("Home Button click under progress")  myElem_1.click()   myElem_2 = WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "/html/body/div[1]/section/div/div[2]/div/form/div[3]/p/a")))  print("Login button click under progress")  myElem_2.click()  sleep(10) except TimeoutException:  print("No element found")  sleep(10)  driver.close() As seen in the example above, a wait of 10 seconds is performed for each web element before a TimeOutException is raised if the element is not found.Now, that we know how to test IE on macOS and incorporate Selenium automation testing on IE. It is only natural to dwell on to Microsoft Edge browser! What should we make of Microsoft Edge considering the state of IE in 2019? Should Microsoft Edge browser be a part of your cross browser testing script?Find out more from the Original Source: Selenium Automation Testing on Internet Explorer (IE) & Edge

Internet Explorer may arguably be at some bottom rung in the browser ladder, but it can't be neglected that it's improved by a lot until the current IE 10 beta. Why is it still being developed? A plain answer would be that it's still competitive.By "worst software", there's a stigma among knowledgeable browser users (those people that fall between my grandmother and general programmer adepts) that Internet Explorer sucks, and for a handful of reasons, they'd be correct. However, the general idea that IE sucks stems from the trash that is IE 6.In my opinion, Microsoft grew too complacent with their browser by it's sixth major incarnation that they let it atrophy to the point of not releasing updates for a very long time, and letting other browsers enter the market and fill in the holes that IE was lacking. By the time that Microsoft noticed and decided to take action, it was too late.However, that aside, Internet Explorer as it stands now is pretty competent. I'm talking about IE 9+ here. It's got good current web tech support (although, it's still lacking, admittedly).But again, why is Microsoft still building it?That would make for a good, long discussion, in my opinion. One good reason, however, is that Internet Explorer (just like most other next-gen browsers) have proprietary support for Microsoft products. This exists at both high-level and low-level.By high level, I'm talking about how using IE with select Microsoft products enhances the user experience. Using Sharepoint in IE, for example, let's you integrate version control with document management in MS Office.By low level, I'm talking about how the IE engine integrates directly into Windows. There's a good deal of movement towards web-driven applications and cloud support. It's no surprise that Microsoft makes use of, for example, the same rendering engine that Internet Explorer uses to run renders on Windows (remember Active Desktop?). With the coming Windows 8, that's more true than ever, allowing you to natively run web applications directly on your desktop. I won't be surprised if IE is involved in some manner on that.Then there's the monetary value of having your own browser. While it's not as true as in the past, developing a browser for mass scale use allows you to specify defaults, which a good handful of users will not change.Why does that matter? A good example would be a default search engine. Microsoft can set Bing as default for IE installs, and a significant number of people will end up using that by default, because they don't change the defaults. Using Bing, eventually translates to incoming web revenue for Microsoft.As you can see, there can be a whole plethora of reasons.