Windows Selenium Testing Setup for Robot Framework Use

Windows_RF_Setup.md

Windows Users

Windows Bit-version Assumption

• Execution is on a 64-bit version of Windows. To maintain continuity, we will be keeping almost everything "bit-aligned" so that executables and libraries will all be 64-bit.
• The one possible exception to this is for Internet Explorer's Selenium Driver. See why that is below.

Configure Environment

1. Download the appropriate browser drivers:

• For Google Chrome - the latest Chromedriver executable can be found here. The downloadable file will always be named chromedriver_win32.zip, and must be decompressed for use (the executable being chromedriver_win32.exe).
• For Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may select the appropriate bit version for your workstation (almost certainly the 64-bit version) from the Selenium HQ site. As of this writing, the latest 64-bit version was 4.6.0.0. However, there is (was?) a known bug that causes sending keys (to emulate a user typing) to be extremely slow. Therefore, as of this writing, it is recommended you use the 32-bit version of the driver (version 2.53.1 here)
• Mozilla Firefox does not require an external driver - it comes with Selenium "hooks" built in.

2. Unzip the file(s) and place the executable(s) (chromedriver.exe and/or IEDriverServer.exe) somewhere that it makes sense to put in your Path system variable. Here are instructions on how to add a path so that is accessible system-wide. The author's recommendation is to create a directory named bin at the root of the C drive. This allows you to add other simple executables in the same directory, which can be invoked from then on (once you add this directory to the Path).
3. You will almost certainly need to download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python.

Special Instructions for Internet Explorer

Assuming you have already set up the driver for Internet Explorer (see above), there are two additional steps you need to take in order to have IE function as a web client for testing:

1. You must launch Internet Explorer and verify that the zoom level is set to exactly 100%. For instructions on how to verify that, see this page.
2. You must have Protected Settings enabled for all security zones. An article here will explain in more detail, but the salient setting is depicted in this picture: