Selenium's WebDriver is now a W3C Recommendation!

May 31, 2018

We are really excited to announce that Selenium's WebDriver has become a World Wide Web Consortium *recommendation* today, May 31st.

Selenium is a free software project that has been a Conservancy member since 2011. It's a suite of tools that enables browser automation across most modern browsers and operating systems. Selenium is also the core technology in many other types of browser automation tools, APIs and frameworks. Selenium's WebDriver is particularly innovative because it binds tightly to a browser implementation, enabling web developers to run tests as if they were the actual user on many different environments in parallel.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international body dedicated to shepherding the Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth. On May 31st, W3C will add the Selenium WebDriver to its list of Recommendations. This means that many other projects around the world will be able to use WebDriver knowing that it's been vetted by a thorough, multi-stakeholder process and found to be the best and most interoperable tool for browser automation. It also means that other standards can build upon the foundation offered to open those new standards to automation.

Conservancy aims to make it easy for our member projects to send people to important working group meetings and fund the kind of critical development needed to achieve these kinds of milestones. To help in this instance, we hired Simon Stewart to contract for several months to work on this as well as facilitated his travel from London to California. Conservancy applauds the Selenium developers for tirelessly pursing the standard as well as W3C's decision to recommend WebDriver as the best tool for the development of a more accessible and collaborative web. Nothing makes us happier than seeing our projects succeed in their goals, whether that is building fantastic free software or making technology better and more responsive to users' needs -- or in this case, both!

Congratulations to Selenium for receiving global recognition for their hard work and savvy leadership in web testing!

About Selenium

Selenium is a suite of tools for browser automation. It is composed of “IDE”, a recording and playback mechanism, “WebDriver” which provide an API for browser automation in a wide variety of languages, and “Grid”, which allows many tests using the APIs to be run in parallel. It works with most browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

About Conservancy

Conservancy, a public charity focused on ethical technology, is home to over forty member projects dedicated to developing and promoting free and open source software. Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella, allowing member projects to operate as charitable initiatives without having to manage their own corporate structure and administrative services.

About W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor and Director Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.