disable Native Events for Firefox driver (enable Synthesized Events)

[Corey Goldberg]

some background....

In Selenium (WebDriver), there are 2 ways to simulate user interaction events (key presses, mouse movement, etc).

Native Events:
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sending events (user input) to the Browser involves generating actual OS events (via X's event system).

Synthesized Events:
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sending events (user input) to the Browser is done by firing events at the DOM via JavaScript.

more info:
see: https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/NativeEventsOnLinux

Native events are only implemented on certain operating systems (Windows and Linux, not Mac), and only for certain browsers (afaik only Firefox).

Synthesized events are supported in Selenium WebDriver for all browsers on all operating systems.

the problem:
While native events were supposed to provide more realistic user interaction simulation, they have been nothing but problems for the past ~3 years since Selenium 2 (webdriver) was released. We often get breakage when a new version of Firefox is released. This is usually due to native events failing. Upstream Selenium Core developers have had a very difficult time keeping native events working between successive releases.

Solution:
I think we should disable native events in Firefox, and run with Synthesized events.

for disabling native events, see:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19471102/selenium-webdriver-disable-native-events-enable-synthesized-events