Support for Chrome headless mode

[Sam]

Are there plans to support the new headless mode in Chrome?

[Elena]

Hello Sam,

Thank you for contacting us. 

Please note that Chrome headless mode is actually opposite of the idea of functional testing and thus could not be implemented as a feature.

Since Test Studio is a functional automating tool it is supposed to interact with the elements on page. And in a headless browser there will be no page to test against. 

Thank you for your understanding! 

Regards,
Elena Tsvetkova
Progress Telerik

 

[Christian]

Headless mode just refers to the browser window. The full browser has a page with a rendered bitmap in memory - it just isn't shown on screen. Using Selenium you can manipulate the headless browser as normal, without seeing anything on the screen, and still get a full page bitmap dumped out to a file.

 

The whole point of the headless mode is the ability to run functional tests on a build server without requiring it to be logged in without a screen saver.

 

Not supporting headless Chrome is a big problem for Telerik.

[Elena]

Hello Christian,

Thank you for reaching us out. 

Depending on how the automation tests are designed you might avoid the active session on the execution machine. The limitation you might face is in the case when there are direct mouse or keyboard actions like real clicks, real typing, dialog handling, etc. This is a Windows limitation and concerns any tool that performs UI testing. Please read some further details on that issue here. At the bottom of the article there are few workarounds listed which you could find helpful. 

Regards,
Elena Tsvetkova
Progress Telerik

 

[Uroš]

I agree with Christian. Headless mode is such an improvement over traditional GUI execution because you do not need dedicated machines for test executions only, especially if you have more then one executor. You should check what competition is doing.. https://www.katalon.com

[Elena]

Hello Uroš,

Thank you for the feedback - I really appreciate it. 

Although you should be aware that headless browser will be applicable for different type and depth of web application testing. Certainly execution tests against a headless browser will not comply with the functional testing offered by Test Studio as of now. 

Despite the above note here is a feature request which will be explored by the management and developers teams. Once it is clear what the demand would be for such implementation the item will be updated accordingly. 

Thanks once again for sharing your ideas with us! 

Regards,
Elena Tsvetkova
Progress Telerik

 

[Elena]

Hi guys,

A couple of years later, though, I want to jump back to this discussion and share the good news headless execution in Chrome browser is implemented in the latest Test Studio 2021 R1 release - find the release notes here. 

Happy testing everyone!

Regards,
Elena
Progress Telerik