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Recently, I got my machine replaced and I had to start installing stuffs all over again. I have 64-bit Windows machine and instead of using 64-bit IE driver, I used 32-bit IE driver. The reason for using the 32-bit IE driver is obviously the slow typing issue in 64-bit one, and switching seems the only option as can be found in below threads.

Why is Selenium InternetExplorerDriver Webdriver very slow in debug mode (visual studio 2010 and IE9), and WebDriver and IE10 very slow input

My questions are:

  1. Can slow typing issue be solved without really switching to 32-bit IE Driver?

  2. What is the need of 64-bit IE driver when it can slow down your tests very much?

On Selenium official download page, 32-bit is recommended, do we actually require 64-bit.

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Manu
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2 Answers2

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As pointed out in the link shared by @Saifur above, there seems to be the workaround for using 64-bit instead of switching to 32-bit(though I haven't yet tested it and probably never will).

First, you can disable native events by setting the "nativeEvents" capability to false using whatever mechanism your language binding provides for this.

and,

A more accurate workaround from an input simulation perspective would be to enable the "requireWindowFocus" capability, though this also has a windows hook dependency, which may manifest in other ways.

Manu
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Can slow typing issue be solved without really switching to 32-bit IE Driver?

To my knowledge no. I did a benchmarking on login page of my application using 32x vs 64x version. There are significant amount of performance improvement when you use 32x as you know.

What is the need of 64-bit IE driver when it can slow down your tests very much?

Couple of reasons why.

  • According to this thread, the non-truncated screenshot of the page is only possible if you use 64x version of IEDriverServer.
  • The 64x of IE8 on windows 7 RTM and IE9 both can be run as 64x application using 64x IEDriverServer. There could be a need to use 64x application for testing purpose.
Saifur
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    Products of Microsoft are quite famous for their notoriety and kind of carved a niche for themselves ;) – Manu Jul 08 '15 at 07:00
  • Thanks for the link, that pretty much points out the difference. There seems to some reason of using 64-bit driver and has a workaround that i mentioned in my answer below. – Manu Jul 08 '15 at 07:01
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    A full accounting and technical analysis of the reasons for this behavior can be found at http://jimevansmusic.blogspot.com/2014/09/screenshots-sendkeys-and-sixty-four.html – JimEvans Jul 08 '15 at 14:21