We at G2iX, being an advocate of open source technology are working closely towards the quality of software by taking advantage of the open source tools that are available in the web. In the area of software testing we see Selenium as potential candidate for web application testing tool.
In our attempt to attain this goal, QA team is privileged to have Selenium trainings within our company. During one of our sessions with our Selenium guru Aaron Tinio, he discussed a topic on how to create a firefox profile for our selenium test which I find worth blogging, so now I'm reposting it here from my personal blog. Hope this post could be of help to more QA who want to try automation using Selenium.
Why create a new firefox profile for Selenium?
We create firefox profile for Selenium Remote Control tests, so we can set light and necessary configurations to it, which later on we’ll be using to run our Selenium scripts faster and more efficiently.
How to create Firefox profile for your Selenium?
1. Make sure all your firefox instance are closed
2. Click Start>Run
3. Type “firefox.exe -ProfileManager -no-remote”
4. Select “Create Profile” (i.e. selenium)
5. Click “Next”
6. Enter new profile name
7. Select a directory folder to store your new profile
8. Click “Finish”
9. Select “Don’t ask at startup”
10. Click “Start Firefox” and configure settings based on suggestion below ***
11. Set Profile back to “default” (enable you to use your previous settings on your browser)
12. Add -firefoxProfileTemplate command line option as you start the Selenium Server
java -jar selenium-server.jar -firefoxProfileTemplate “<Selenium Profile Directory>”
*** Suggested settings for your Selenium Profile
1. From “View\Toolbars” tab, uncheck “Bookmarks Toolbar”
2. Right click from toolbar and click “Customize”
3. Remove “Google search” by dragging it to the “Customize Toolbar” window
4. From the “Customize Toolbar” window, click “Use Small Icons” check box then hit “Done”
5. Click “Tools\Options” then set the following:
a. “Main” tab
- set Home Page to “about:blank”
- uncheck “Show the Downloads..” option
b. “Tabs” tab
- Select “a new window” for new pages
- Uncheck all warning options
c. “Content” tab
- uncheck “Block pop-up” windows option
d. “Privacy” tab
- uncheck all “History” options
e. “Security” tab
- uncheck all “Security” options
- click “Settings” and uncheck all warning options
f. “Advanced” tab
- Uncheck “autoscrolling” option from “General” tab
- uncheck “warn me …” and “Search Engines”option from “Update” tab
6. From “Tools\Add-ons” install the following:
- Firebug: allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript on your application under test
- Selenium IDE: allows you to record, edit, and debug Selenium tests
- ScreenGrab: saves entire webpages as images.
7. From the address bar type “about:config” and add the following by right-click anywhere on the page and selecting “new”
- extensions.update.notifyUser (type=boolean; value=false)
- extensions.newAddons (type=boolean; value=false)