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16.2Era 1: Selenium and JavaScript Injection (2004-2011)
How It Worked
Selenium injected JavaScript into the browser to simulate user actions. A Java-based "Selenium RC" server acted as a proxy.
Test Script → Selenium RC Server → Injected JS in Browser
Problems
- Same-Origin Policy: JavaScript couldn't cross domain boundaries
- Browser security: Increasingly restricted what injected JS could do
- Fragile: Depended on browser internals that changed frequently
- Slow: HTTP round trips for every action