Unclear how to set `--headless=new`

[ysangkok]

According to https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-headless-shell, and https://www.selenium.dev/blog/2023/headless-is-going-away/ , there is a new way to set headless mode.

I'd like to use it, but it is unclear how to do that.

I am using the following version of selenium server: java -jar selenium-server-standalone-2.53.1.jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=/home/janus/Downloads/chromedriver-linux64/chromedriver

When I run the example program, Chrome pops up on my X server, which I would like to prevent.

[thomasjm]

First of all, Selenium 2.x is quite old. This library is currently undergoing a big refactor to target 3.x and 4.x natively, so I'd recommend using those.

You can pass extra command-line arguments to Chrome using the chromeOptions field of the Chrome constructor of the Browser.

If you want a nice library to help with using webdriver, I'd recommend another of my packages, sandwich-webdriver, which handles this for you. It actually detects the Chrome version being used and passes --headless or --headless=new as needed. It can also automatically obtain Selenium and/or browser binaries for you. You may want to try (assuming you have Nix):

git clone git@github.com:codedownio/sandwich.git
cd sandwich
# headed mode
stack run demo-webdriver-nix -- --tui --chrome
# headless mode
stack run demo-webdriver-nix -- --tui --chrome --headless

[thomasjm]

This should be well-supported on the newly released 0.13.0.0.