Advantage of web driver with selenium

What is WebDriver?

WebDriver uses a different underlying framework from Selenium’s java script Selenium-Core. It also provides an alternative API with functionality not supported in Selenium-RC. WebDriver does not depend on a java script core embedded within the browser; therefore it is able to avoid some long-running Selenium limitations.

WebDriver’s goal is to provide an API that establishes

• A well-designed standard programming interface for web-app testing. 
• Improved consistency between browsers.
• Additional functionality addressing testing problems not well-supported in Selenium 1.0.

The Selenium developers strive to continuously improve Selenium. Integrating WebDriver is another step in that process. The developers of Selenium and of WebDriver felt they could make significant gains for the Open Source test automation community be combining forces and merging their ideas and technologies. Integrating WebDriver into Selenium is the current result of those efforts.

When to Use WebDriver?

One should use WebDriver when requiring improved support for:

• Multi-browser testing including improved functionality for browsers not well-supported by Selenium-1.0.
• Handling multiple frames, multiple browser windows, popup, and alerts.
• Page navigation.
• Drag-and-drop.
• AJAX-based UI elements.
• Support for iPhone and android testing.
• Implementation of listeners - a much awaited feature.
• Better features for Ajax testing.
• You can easily simulate clicking on front and back button of browser.
• You can extract objects in bulk like QTP. For ex - extract all links of page. With RC this was a big hassle.
• Unlike RC you don’t have to start a server in WebDriver.
• You can simulate movement of a mouse using selenium.
• Tabs and pops are more or less the same. RC can also handle and WebDriver can also handle.
• You can find coordinates of any object using WebDriver.
• You have classes in WebDriver which help you to simulate key press events of keyboard.
• Keyword driven framework is very easy to build in WebDriver.