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Special Considerations for IE

Please note the following differences between Internet Explorer and Chrome/Edge:

  • Internet Explorer relies on an image of the entire web page when executing an image-matching Step, while Chrome and Edge rely on the portion of the page that is present and visible in the browser (i.e. the viewport).

  • When using a mouse-clicking Step with Internet Explorer, links with a hover state may not be clickable.

  • When using the "linkText" locator type with Internet Explorer, use the link text as it is visible on the page and NOT in the HTML.

  • Generally, Internet Explorer web-based tests will take significantly longer to complete than those running in Chrome or Edge.

  • Web Steps that rely on the ordering of tabs within the browser will not work consistently in Internet Explorer. Chrome and Edge preserve the ordering of tabs but Internet Explorer does not. Therefore, the following steps will not reliably work in IE:

    I switch to <NEXT|PREVIOUS> tab in web browser I switch to tab "<TAB_NUMBER>" in web browser

For IE 11 only:​

You will need to set a registry entry on the target computer so that the driver can maintain a connection to the instance of Internet Explorer it creates.

  • For 32-bit Windows installations, the key you must examine in the registry editor is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BFCACHE.
  • For 64-bit Windows installations, the key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BFCACHE.

(Please note that the FEATURE_BFCACHE subkey may or may not be present, and should be created if it is not present.)

Important: Inside this key, create a DWORD value named iexplore.exe with the value of 0.